The nature of work has changed, and traditional workforce management (WFM) paradigms have to give way to a whole new concept of what work is and how it is assigned.<\/p>\n
Call centers looking to meet the new requirements of an increasingly flexible blended digital office are taking a new approach to workforce management.<\/p>\n
The workplace today bears little resemblance to that of a few years ago. The pandemic changed employee and consumer behaviours across generations, making tech-savvy New Generation X and Boomers just as likely as their younger counterparts to use asynchronous channels like chat<\/strong> or messaging of text<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This affects more than just the way people communicate at work (nearly half of customer service leaders recently surveyed by Salesforce indicated that the number of support channels agents use has increased in the past two years), but also the way they communicate in their spare time. At the same time, an increase in remote work has transformed the way contact centers manage workforce and customer contacts alike<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Companies are increasingly using bots to handle simple customer inquiries, which means more complex inquiries fall to agents<\/strong>. This often translates into longer call times, and consequently new complexities in WFM processes: this presents a challenge for teams using traditional workforce management solutions, which work best when the Average Handle Time (AHT) is shorter than the planning interval.<\/p>\n Planning and anticipating in an environment where interactions are increasingly digital requires that WFM teams stop waiting for contact to end and start reporting when activity occurs (for example, when an agent responds to a social media post) and also when a contact becomes active again (for example, when the customer follows up their social post with a direct message to the business). This will allow WFM teams to plan and forecast based on interval-specific activity patterns, not just the number of contacts and the interval in which a contact ends<\/strong>.<\/p>\n2) Bots Are Becoming More Popular<\/strong><\/h3>\n
3) Agents Must Report The Activity Before Ending The Interaction With The Customer<\/strong><\/h3>\n
4) Planning And Scheduling Of Work<\/strong><\/h3>\n