Workforce management is essential to the operational efficiency of a contact center. Recruiting a vast number of employees is not the difficult part. Retaining them and ensuring they work at their optimum potential is one of the major management challenges. Workforce management revolves around ensuring the right number of people are logged in and handling contacts at the expected performance levels.
If call center workforce management is carried out using the tools and techniques, it can have a significant impact on the call center’s performance indicators, like service level and customer satisfaction.
Common Call Center Management Challenges
The challenges are not related to internal management only, numerous other external factors are also at play. Below are some of the major challenges faced by contact centers today:
Forecasting Agent Workload
Forecasting agent workload and establishing staff timetables are important aspects of workforce management. If a center is understaffed, the agents will be overburdened, and not able to cater to the customers which would lead to unhappy customers and lost opportunities. On the contrary, an overstaffed center with idle, and bored agents is a waste of resources and money. Thus, by managing the workload at your desired service level while using the fewest agents possible, you can achieve the perfect balance.
The only roadblock is to make a schedule that corresponds to the anticipated workload which can be overcome by analyzing prior workload reports and making use of that data in forecasting the actions and plans that will have an impact on the upcoming projects.
High Employee Turnover Rate
In the past, the turnover rate in the customer service sector has always remained on the higher end of the scale. Because turnover results in a lack of institutional knowledge and expertise, it can be a significant issue for contact centers.
You can offer competitive salaries and benefits and make an effort to enhance the work environment of your company. By incorporating contact center AI technologies, such as chatbots, and having an efficient omnichannel contact center model, you can rely on technology to lessen the strain on your personnel. Chatbots can assist in reducing the workload on your personnel by responding to straightforward client inquiries.
Plausible Errors
The complexity of workforce management activities raises the possibility of errors. Maintaining personnel files, recording and tracking attendance, recording spending, and the list goes on. Timeliness of getting actionable data, level of effort, and errors will pose as roadblocks in keeping up with the demands of workforce management once the total group gets to be of any size. If you carry out all these tasks manually without involving your IT support company, the issue gets worse. Being human means that mistakes and backlog will inevitably occur as you become weary of the arduous manual labor. Such errors ultimately impact the performance of a contact center.
Consider the use of call center workforce management software to automate and streamline scheduling, forecasting, tracking, measuring, and other management tasks. Automation takes the burden of managing the staff off of the management, saves cost, and ultimately makes the process efficient.
Dissatisfied Agents
There’s no denying the fact that when workers are unhappy, the overall performance levels drop. Besides dealing with difficult customers, agents are also under pressure to meet high-performance goals frequently. In such scenarios, agents find it emotionally exhausting and quite challenging to maintain a positive attitude.
You can take some load off the employees through customer support software or by incorporating a customer engagement model that offloads incoming customer inquiries and empowers your agents on a technical level. Making an online knowledge base is a valuable resource for both customers and agents. Customers may discover all the information they need in one place without having to speak to a representative.
Additionally, most contact centers have extremely flat structures of hierarchy with very little prospect for professional advancement and promotions. As a result, the bulk of employees remains stuck in entry-level positions. This adds to their dissatisfaction. In fact, many are tempted to leave to find better opportunities causing high attrition rate. Encouraging teamwork and providing opportunities for professional advancement within your call center is the solution.
Measuring and Monitoring Employee Performance
Monitoring and measuring agents’ performance is crucial to identify both the strong and weak areas. You may end up analyzing and tracking incorrect data if the objectives are unclear. This will result in nothing but a waste of time, money, and resources.
To avoid this, set clear and realistic objectives that are consistent with the vision and mission of the company and automate the measuring and tracking process so that precise data can be obtained to boost performance.
You can handle these management challenges if you move strategically and automate where you can. This will even cultivate agents who are inspired and driven to go above and beyond to serve your clients and customers.