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Adapting Workforce Optimization to Meet the Rapidly Changing Priorities of Contact Center Operations

In normal times, workforce optimization is a business approach that utilizes advanced contact center technologies to improve customer experience while boosting overall operational efficiency. WFO includes…but is not limited to…automating processes, creating greater data visibility, ensuring compliance, performance management, recording, surveying, eLearning, speech analytics and solving staff-related business problems.  

Now, businesses and government agencies are either requiring employees to work from home or redirecting call traffic to employees in less affected regions to handle spikes in interaction volume during the COVID-19 outbreak. Of course, this has led to additional considerations in terms of people and priorities, such as: 

• Increasing the focus on risk assessment and controls
• Greater emphasis on employee communications, policies, and messaging to ensure that front-line personnel are kept abreast of all pertinent facts
• Updating QA monitoring and reporting procedures to incorporate the activities of an elevated number of remote workers
• Improving agility and flexibility while enhancing agent empathy 

With the non-stop changes everyone is currently experiencing—constant uncertainty about what might happen in the immediate future, shifting schedules for work and school, caring for family members and overriding concerns about ongoing health risks—employees are often exhausted by the effort required to simply maintain a sense of consistency in their lives.

This rapidly evolving scenario is spurring a greater sense of urgency for businesses to promote employee engagement and prevent morale from cratering among both remote and premise-based agents. Companies are creating policies on the fly to make necessary adjustments during the transition. Among the strategies to be addressed are minimizing uncertainty by more meticulous tracking of outcomes to better predict results. Agents also need to be given higher degree of empowerment. This can be abetted by ensuring they are equipped with the tools and information necessary to do their jobs.

Taking the necessary steps to stabilize and improve workforce performance during the current crisis was outlined on a complimentary roundtable webcast on Best Practices for Workforce Optimization. It highlighted proven approaches and actionable insights to help optimize efficiency in contact center environments.  Among the topics discussed are: 

• Using WFO tools to help agents safely make the return to the office
• Managing hybrid workforce of remote and onsite workers
• Incorporating regional COVID-19 related safety regulations into business practices
• Spending time wisely – Establishing more frequent touchpoints to ensure agents continue to feel connected
• Keeping agents motivated by sharing successes and reward achievements  

The roundtable featured presentations from two experts from leading WFO solution providers. Rich Correia, Director of Product Marketing, NICE shared his expertise in deploying the right products to meet changing need. Kelly Koelliker, Director, Content Marketing for Verint provided insight on adapting the most effective contact center workforce engagement solutions. 

Click here for the recorded webcast.