The ROI of an Intelligent, Data-Driven Staffing Strategy in the Contact Center
Every company has its own unique way of ensuring that staffing needs are met. This is especially evident when staffing strategies are compared to those of companies in different industries. The contact center requires extra careful attention when it comes to staffing. Managers must ensure that business needs are met by having the right amount of agents with the right skill sets available during regular shifts and peak seasons.
Creating schedules can easily become a headache for managers. Many times they try to accommodate everyone’s preferences while balancing call volume demand. Some shifts may be less desirable than others. As a result, managers get pushback from agents or worse: agents who resign.
Fortunately, when you have a solid staffing strategy supported by the right cloud-based technology, the ROI is readily apparent. When staffing strategies and quality tech work together, efficiency improves and results in many benefits. Read on to identify the areas that efficient staffing impacts the most and the tech used to support those strategies.
How Efficient Staffing Strategies Impact the Contact Center
Scheduling: A good staffing strategy will have its scheduling processes down to an exact science. Schedule adherence can be difficult to achieve if there is a disconnect between agents and management. Here are some key points to consider when implementing an efficient scheduling strategy:
- Heavy call volume days should have enough agents ready to go.
- Unexpected busy days should have a scheduling backup plan.
- Ideally agents can set their own schedules as long as business needs are met.
- Allowing agents to work their shifts from home should also be an option. According to Upwork, 41% of Americans still worked from home nine months into the pandemic. They predict that 22% of the workforce will be remote by 2025. When most other companies offer this as an option, it is crucial to stay competitive when trying to attract top talent.
An easy to use, automated scheduling system that tracks attendance, time off requests, holidays, and overtime frees up time for busy managers. Agents can swap shifts, set their own schedules, and submit requests. Combined with quality forecasting capabilities, a scheduling system like this would greatly enhance a contact center’s staffing strategy.
Accurate Forecasting: Having a clear picture of what staffing needs look like on busy days and slow days before they happen ensures that under or overstaffing is avoided. As a result, contact centers who use reliable forecasting software see a ROI in different ways:
- Customer satisfaction improves because agents are not overworked
- Operating cost budgets are rarely exceeded because less often do surprise busy days pop up
- Less reactivity from senior management when scheduling or handling escalations since the right number of staff would be available for each shift
- Provides more transparency to the agents which helps them become more empowered
Taking Advantage of Employee Strengths: Some agents may excel at handling escalations. Others may be social media savvy and quick to respond to tweets or comments. There are agents who work better in the evening vs. the morning time. Knowing where employees thrive and then playing to their strengths improves confidence and boosts morale. An automated scheduling system can help by:
- Offering shift bidding
- Providing employees the ability to input their preferred schedules
- Shift swapping
- Designating different job functions in each shift
- Providing agents a sense of autonomy
Positive Working Environment: Fostering a positive work environment pays off tremendously. It benefits both customers and agents. When agent morale is high, customers receive higher quality of care. This reflects well on the contact center, highlighting it as a great place to work. Since contact centers are notorious for their high turnover rate percentages of 30-40%, agent retention should always be a priority. Keeping agents engaged through a positive work environment helps by:
- Keeping your contact center sufficiently staffed
- Reducing turnover rates
- Improved customer service
- Higher first call or contact resolution rates
- Attracting higher quality talent
How can you keep agents engaged? The right technology can make their jobs much easier. A unified CRM with omnichannel capabilities allows agents to service customers through various channels. It also eliminates the need to flip through various screens and programs. Customer data is easily visible, and agents can quickly access relevant history from a customer’s previous calls, chats, and emails. This makes the communication smoother and keeps you at the top of customers’ minds.
High Quality Customer Service: You may be thinking that top notch customer service is an obvious non-negotiable, so why include it as an ingredient to a high workflow efficiency? That’s because although great service is always a goal and agents are trained to deliver, many times other factors could negatively impact the customer experience. For example, if your contact center is understaffed one day due to inaccurate forecasting data, customers will not be happy about long hold times. This can impact customer loyalty and retention.
When you provide agents the right tools to perform their jobs, you make their jobs easier and the service they provide would be of a much better quality. Consider the following tech to support this strategy:
- e-Learnings
- Valuable coaching through detailed analytics
- Configurable agent desktops
- Speech transcribing to automate agent scorecards.
- Ticketing systems for IT issues
The return of investment from a data-driven contact center that uses the right tech and staffing strategies is invaluable. It is possible to keep both employees and customers satisfied. If you can automate workflows while boosting employee and customer morale, the investment into quality tech will present a significant payoff for your company.
When considering adopting new efficient staffing strategies, figure out what areas need improvement within your contact center. Make sure to select the right WFO technology to help implement changes and to help improve your agents’ work experience. A positive work environment will help keep agents engaged and continuing to provide quality service.