Workforce Optimization

It may be hard to believe but, 67% of organizations in the industrial world find it extremely difficult to identify, develop, engage and retain their talented people. As a matter of fact, many deploy no talent management strategy at all. This is often due to insufficient time, money and expertise to internally and proactively manage this emerging priority. Most organizations actively spend thousands on carefully seeking out and identifying top talent but do nothing to continue developing that same important talent resource.

• Poor succession planning wipes an estimated $8.4 billion from the stock market value of the top Fortune 1000 companies every year
• Management retention is identified as a negligent error issue by nearly every independent business analysis; the cost of recruiting a middle manager alone is between 33% and 65% of their annual salary
• 78% of organizations in the US and UK experience talent retention problems as opposed to 67% worldwide
• Despite the challenging economy, US and UK employees are among the most likely to consider leaving their job during the next 12 months, with 53% of employees specifically stating in exit interviews that they are leaving to fulfill their career development needs elsewhere
• Changing workforce demographics means that leadership and management skills, which are often developed as talent moves up through the lower levels in a company, are in devastatingly short supply

During my tenure working in a call center during college, I learned to play Hearts, had several eating contests (never won), spent weeks getting a radio station to play a song, and did a lot of homework. Suffice it to say, working the evening shift wasn't very busy and we were at least a tad overstaffed. Granted, our average answer time was off the charts and hold times were nonexistent. And, because we created a fun work environment as a team, attrition was quite low. 

While allowing your agents to have a pie eating contest on company time (at their desks) may not be a traditional means of agent retention, managing your workforce is becoming much more of a science. It's a long-held truth that personnel is the biggest cost in a contact center (as high as 70-80%) and training new employees carries a huge cost (as high as $5,000 per employee) so it makes sense that you would want to hang onto your high-performing agents. And along that same vein, many of the strategies that leading companies are using to manage the workforce seem very common sense at face value, but actually implementing them can require breaking down years of assumptions.   Read more»

As you may have noticed this morning, we announced a fantastic expanded partnership with Verint Systems Inc. We've been partners with Verint Systems for the past year, as we've been offering their award winning workforce management (WFM) solution through the inContact cloud to our customers. The partnership has made Verint's fantastic solution available to companies of all sizes.

The partnership has been a great success for both our companies, and we are now very happy to have expanded our relationship with Verint... we are now offering a complete portfolio of workforce optimization solutions in the cloud through this expanded partnership.   Read more»

If you have worked in call centers for some time, you have seen Workforce Optimization morph quite drastically over the past decade or so.  What began as a couple of systems now composes more than eight distinct functions ranging from workforce management to QM to eLearning.  In the rush to build these capabilities, well over three dozen vendors have popped up, some solving a single need while others attempt to offer a suite.  So which is the best?

In the single point solutions, you often gain a deep level of functionality as a result of the narrowed focus the vendor has on their product area.  You also gain the flexibility of implementing the solution that most closely fits your needs.  At the same time, you may introduce problems when it comes to integrating with other components in your WFO suite.  You also may end up paying for features you don’t need and paying more in general as you are unable to take advantage of package discounts that most combination vendors offer.   Read more»

Competitive advantage in a call center is all about providing best of breed service in the most efficient way possible which, to the many that strive for this, is more difficult to achieve than one might expect.  It is this difficulty that makes achieving such optimal levels a powerful advantage.  Although there are many factors that contribute to this success, a call center must focus on the agent to set itself apart.    Read more»