Aspect Workforce Mobile gives workforce management mobility to the agent masses

Aspect Software, a leading provider of fully integrated customer interaction management, workforce optimisation and back office solutions, has announced the launch of Aspect Workforce Mobile, a mobile application designed to give contact centre agents greater mobile access to Aspect's Workforce Management solution.

Built on Aspect's dynamic Applications Foundation, which allows easily configured innovative solutions through packaged functional components and APIs, the application provides contact centre personnel access to critical information, and the ability to send real-time notifications and to process timely updates directly to the enterprise system, from any location.

Developed by Aspect's Innovations Group, a team dedicated to developing tailored applications and products, Aspect Workforce Mobile extends the mobile capabilities already available to managers to contact centre agents, and addresses a desire for more mobility in the workforce at large. According to a 2012 McKinsey survey*, 56% of CIOs report a strong demand from employees to support a wide range of mobile devices, and 77% plan to allow employees to use personal mobile devices to access company data and applications.

"While many departments have adopted mobile technologies and policies that allow for more flexibility, there has been a noticeable lack of really robust mobile applications for contact centre agents," says Spence Mallder, General Manager: Workforce Optimisation and Chief Technology Officer at Aspect. "Drawing on our market leadership in workforce management solutions, we developed Aspect Workforce Mobile to meet our customers' requirements for an application that empowers and not just connects agents. Our customers using the application have already seen how this empowerment translates into a positive impact on productivity and bottom-line results, enabling agents to deliver exceptional customer experiences."

Aspect Workforce Management makes it possible for agents to view and make changes to their own schedules and access performance metrics on their smartphones. According to one early adopter of the application, allowing their first group of nearly 3 000 agents to manage their own schedules while Workforce Management automatically updates will have saved them nearly $500 000 a year. Efficient intra-day scheduling provides a number of additional benefits, including:

* Delivers immediate results through automation without tying up resource time from supervisors or administrators, which allows them to focus on more productive activities.
* Enables supervisors to manage employee schedules, view and approve requests, evaluate intra-day statistics and receive real-time alerts from their smartphones.
* Allows contact centres to respond to unexpected call volumes that require additional agents or take advantage of low volume by offering agents training or the ability to perform additional outbound marketing call campaigns.

"As the contact centre increasingly becomes a strategic centrepiece of the overall customer experience, Aspect Workforce Mobile extends companies' ability to provide a flexible work environment that empowers agents, enables a more productive workforce and in turn allows them to deliver consistently exceptional customer experiences," added Mallder.

Aspect Mobile Workforce is available globally. For more information, visit the Aspect Workforce Mobile data sheet.

* According to McKinsey & Company, Inc. June 2012 report "The Mobile Disruption".