Call Center Operation: Design, Operation, and Maintenance
Gives complete coverage of the critical issues involved in the design, implementation, organization, and management of a customer call center.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Call Center Operation: Design, Operation, and Maintenance
3.7 Creating value through workforce optimization
3.7 Creating value through workforce optimization
Call center managers need to understand that successful management means understanding the complex trade-offs inherent in the sophisticated call center operating environment, where the proper allocation, dispersal, and treatment of the human resource are fundamental requirements. Quantifying and increasing the value of workforce optimization solutions is important and needs to be addressed. Typically, analysis focuses on software and infrastructure investments that will yield greater efficiencies resulting from automation. Some call center product vendors, however, take a different approach that assesses the return on investment in the human resource, the employees in the call center.
Assessing value creation
Personnel costs usually account for 70 to 80% of overall operational expenses in contact centers. Leveraging these personnel resources efficiently through workforce optimization solutions can potentially provide significant returns. However, most models for assessing value creation only consider the benefits derived from streamlining the processes of forecasting and scheduling call center staff to meet service goals. These models may result in significant gains through the automation of various functions, but they fail to address the real complexity of workforce optimization and are far too simple to portray accurately the real meaning of workforce optimization.
The major factors involved in managing and maximizing CSR productivity and the quality of customer interactions while maximizing the number of contacts handled per agent hinge on the ability to match the volume and type of customer contacts precisely. These factors include availability of agents by skill type and contact media type (e.g.,...
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