Question: Your market sector appears to be saturated with many companies in the workforce management software business. In the current stagnant economic environment, who do you believe will be the survivors? What characteristics does a company need to ensure they're still around when “the smoke clears”?
The survivors will be the companies who provide true value across the board – companies who provide stable software solutions that address the business needs of today's contact centers. Vendors also need to provide outstanding customer service and educational programs on an ongoing basis. Customers are looking for vendors with proven track records – financially stable companies who have made significant commitments to R&D investments in their software products and commit to do so in the future. Now more than ever, customers need to know that the vendors that they choose to do business with will be around five years from now and will continue to enhance and support their products. Companies that provide in-depth functionality rather than “check-the-box” features will be the ones who survive on a long-term basis. Customers also appreciate vendors who have employees with real-world contact center experience who really understand the situations that the customers face everyday. Customers also need workforce management systems that provide flexibility as their contact center scenarios evolve in today's changing business environments – products that can provide true multi-site functionality as well as single site capabilities.
Question: With enhancements such as performance management capabilities, some of the companies in your market space are trying to significantly embellish their offerings. What directions can we expect that IEX and its competitors will take in the near future?
In some ways, “performance management” or “workforce optimization” is akin to CRM – it is more a concept and way of running an operation than a shrink-wrapped software system. IEX will continue to invest in the core competencies of workforce management, as forecasting, planning, scheduling and change management are at the core of any “performance management” system.
TotalView today includes a number of performance management features and we partner with the leading vendors of quality monitoring, analytics and e-learning to provide integrated solutions.
Question: Some vendors inundate their customers with a lot of “bells and whistles”. Realistically, what do you consider are some of key differentiators between the workforce software offerings?
Features that truly help contact center managers do their jobs well in today's environment are the differentiators purchasers should look at when evaluating vendors. Skill-based scheduling and multimedia scheduling offer perfect examples. Agent self-service features, such as allowing agents access to schedules and schedule trading functionality from their desktops, are also important due to the significant benefits in timesavings they provide by automating many administrative tasks.
In determining key differentiators purchasers need to look at the level of functionality provided with a software feature, not just whether that particular feature is available in a product. Every workforce management vendor claims to provide skill scheduling, but the details of this feature differ greatly between offerings. Even subtle differences in functionality can greatly impact contact center efficiency on a daily basis.
Question: IEX has secured a firm foothold in their market. Without giving away too many secrets, what do you attribute your company's solid market positioning to.
Superior technology, our comprehensive functionality and our system architecture, combined with an unwavering commitment of outstanding customer service. We have a unique program at IEX in our customer advocate program. We spend significant time with our customers in their environment understanding their needs and showing them how to utilize our software to address those issues. Our company has a long record of steady growth and financial stability – which is really important in today's business environment. We continuously enhance our product. We have won a number of awards for our customer service. A quote from Harvard Pilgrim, a customer who presented IEX with its Salute to Service award, says it best: “IEX Customer Support helps make my job easier. They work quickly and diligently to provide answers to my questions regarding the TotalView Workforce Management product. More importantly, they always convey a feeling of concern and respect for my situation. I feel like they truly care about me as a customer.” Caring about your customers and providing quality solutions that address their business needs and significantly improve efficiency are key reasons why IEX is a leader in the workforce management market.
Question: IEX has several sales and marketing partnerships. All too often we find that some partnerships are not very beneficial to either party. What do you expect from a partner? What do you believe are the ingredients for a successful partnership?
The key to a successful partnership is that the partnership has strong strategic value for each side and that the companies continue to work together after the agreement is signed. All too often, companies sign agreements and then do not devote the time and energy to make the partnership work. Each company in a partnership has to educate their employees on the strategic value of the partnership and how it will help each company to be more successful.
Question: As we all know, there is extremely high turnover among agents. The recent trends are giving the agents more control over their work day. What is your feeling about empowering agents to control their day? How much control do you think they should be given and how does this impact management time?
New tools to automate the tasks of schedule bidding, schedule communication, schedule trading and requesting changes to schedules offer ways to “empower” agents. These tools also significantly reduce the time management must spend on processing and explaining schedule changes. I think this functionality is exciting for its ability to significantly impact employee morale as well as providing a substantial return on investment in timesavings for management. This functionality is critical today, when everyone has to accomplish more with less resources. Although the concept of granting substantial scheduling control to agents is appealing, in reality it is rarely practiced. The delicate balancing act between customer needs and employee needs must be addressed. If agents are allowed to control their schedules to a significant degree, chaos will ensue and customers will be negatively impacted as undesirable schedules are left unfilled. In contrast, we have seen an evolution to manual schedule bidding (as opposed to automatic agent assignment based on preferences) as one method to portray a sense of control without losing control of the operation. Management maintains control of the mix of schedules needed to serve the customer, while providing agents an opportunity for schedule selection.
Question: There are different algorithms for scheduling for voice, the arrival and processing of email, and for chat. There are companies that are moving to a universal agent, one that can manage all of these customer contact points. In your opinion, do you think that the universal agent idea is realistic, and secondly, how can a workforce management system schedule for this type of agent?
Several enterprises have experimented with a universal agent concept, with limited success. In general, it is difficult to find a significant number of individuals who are (a) capable of successful multi-tasking with minimal errors and (b) possess the required verbal and written grammar skills for text-based and voiced-based communications. As such, a universal agent should be one who is capable of such tasks, rather than requiring the tasks from every agent in a work group. Mathematical algorithms alone cannot accomplish scheduling for universal agents. An iterative closed-loop feedback simulation method must be used to understand the interaction of the various contact types and individual agent skills.