Why do you need call center agent adherence monitoring? Call center schedules are notoriously fragile. Agents may arrive late, log in to the wrong work queue, take breaks or lunch at slightly different times than planned, or get called away for an unexpected meeting or conference. When too many agents are missing in action, the center’s […]

As call centers become more technically complex and agents become more specialized, staffing becomes an increasingly critical issue. Having too few agents available drives away customers (a dangerous practice with the competition only a click away), while having too many agents is costly for the company. Additionally, today’s tight employment market makes retaining skilled agents […]

Why is an intraday call center scheduling tool a must have? It’s 8:10 am, and already the day’s schedule needs to be fed to the shredder. Several agents have called in sick, others have been stranded by a snowstorm, a supervisor has convened an emergency meeting, and the phones are flooded because a product you’re […]

Today’s call center environments are becoming increasingly complex by handling multi-lingual calls, and supporting diverse clients, products, or services. Efficient labor management dictates that agents in such environments should be cross-trained in multiple skilled activities. The need for a Workforce Management system that can comprehend and support these multi-skilled agent environments becomes increasingly critical to overall call center performance […]

In this paper, we will examine skill-based routing and the challenges it poses for the producing optimal workforce management scheduling. 1. Skill-Based Routing – Introduction If your ACD has Skill Routing capabilities (such as Lucent’s Expert Agent Selection – EAS), a primary call will go to its respective queue to be handled by an agent having […]

1. Skill Based Routing – the ACD viewpoint The manner in which the various ACDs implement Skill Based Routing (SBR) can be varied and is often complex: Usually, the switch has a set of tables that define the call types which can be routed to an agent, equal to that agent’s skill set. When that agent logs […]

Darwin would have felt at home in a modern contact center. He would have been able to study its constantly evolving nature and observed his theories in practice. Call centers have always been in a state of evolution; however, technology (including workforce management or WFM technology) has accelerated the process. With the advent of at-home […]

This workforce management (WFM) paper will examine multi-channel contact center WFM, its challenges, and the factors that should be considered when forecasting and scheduling for multi-media work. How do I calculate multi-media requirements? For multi-channel contact center WFM, data collection for forecasting must be enhanced to provide interfaces for all the different multi-media events (email, […]

Essentially all major workforce management (WFM) systems provide forecasting and agent adherence functionality. To accomplish this they must interface with your automatic call distributor to receive various statistical data items. WFM Forecasting and Your Automatic Call Distributor or ACD The critical pieces of information required for WFM forecasting functionality are: Calls Offered Average Handling time […]