Have you ever called customer service for a utility company or tried to place an order with a retailer only to suffer through their incredible wait times? How long are your customers willing to be placed on hold before abandoning the call? Abandoned calls are a universal problem for contact centers that can significantly impact […]

The At-Home Agent Model continues to change call center operations. At-Home Agent Industry Leader, Michelle Rowan, predicts that the number of U.S. companies using the At-Home Agent model will increase to 80% by 2013. Companies currently utilizing remote agents report streamlined operations, improved customer service, decreased call center costs, and increased agent retention and job […]

In the current economy, it is critical to ensure you are getting maximum benefit from your workforce management forecasting tool. Inaccurate forecasting can severely impact profitability. If call volume is underestimated to the extent that 100 callers out of 1,000 hang up before they speak to an agent in a sales environment where the average […]

When it comes to staffing requirements and operational performance goals, every organization is vastly different. Ensuring you have the proper number and types of employees scheduled to manage your back office at any given time can be a challenge, especially if you have little to no visibility into what you needed yesterday, last week, or […]

Holiday scheduling can be tricky and leave centers under- or overstaffed. For centers without an automated solution, last-minute staffing problems require supervisors to manually create, print and distribute new intra-day schedules, and talk to agents individually to solicit overtime hours. This is an inefficient method and causes delays that can leave centers temporarily understaffed and negatively affect daily […]

Making the right purchasing decision is always important for companies who are looking to upgrade or implement new technology. Today’s economy places additional pressure on companies to be more diligent when spending dollars allocated to improve efficiency. Many contact centers are still scheduling agent hours through costly and inefficient manual methods. Investment in one of today’s […]

Workforce management software tools are the most cost-effective and underutilized contact center software. More than 80% of contact centers employing over 500 agents have automated workforce management systems. The number drops to less than 25% for centers with less than 250 agents, even though these centers employ over half of all agents and comprise over 95% of […]

The 2009 World Contact Center Workforce Management (WFM) Systems Market, published by the PELORUS Group, states that “skills-based routing and scheduling are becoming more critical to contact center operations, driven largely by language diversity and the need for special skills and expertise to support increasingly complex products and services.” The importance of accurate forecasting cannot be overstated. […]

According to the 2009 World Contact Center Workforce Management Systems Market report by the PELORUS Group, smaller call centers are thriving and companies are increasingly favoring multiple small contact centers over large centralized facilities, generating a need for small contact center workforce management. This is due, in part, to the availability of lower-cost labor markets. […]

Have you invested in workforce management (WFM) software and implemented cost savings strategies, only to find there is a leak in your plan? Regardless if you are doing everything else right, agent retention is a drain on your budget and can impact your bottom line. Maintaining customer service and balancing operating costs is a tightrope walk and […]