The human capital cost of any contact centre is by far its largest expense. This cost can amount to almost two-thirds of the total expense of running a contact centre.
This is according to Paul Fick, MD of local business communications company Spescom DataFusion. Fick maintains contact centre agents need to be used optimally and must experience job satisfaction in order to reduce human capital costs.
While technology can be used to improve efficiency, he argues, these tools do not always take the human element into account. “If incorrectly deployed, efficiency tools can overwork agents, creating additional strain.
“This in turn creates unhappiness and a propensity to leave, increasing agent churn, disrupting service, lowering customer satisfaction, and ultimately increasing costs due to the need to constantly train new agents,” he adds.
Multi-purpose tools
Fick points to an emerging technology known as 'workforce optimisation', or WFO, which incorporates the measurement of various metrics which address effectiveness and efficiency, as well as agent performance management tools. This helps contact centres reach the pinnacle of customer service, and stay there, he explains.
“Tools such as quality management with advanced scheduling capability, load prediction, and the ability to match scheduling to predicted demand can be used to automate laborious tasks,” notes Fick. “At the same time, such tools can ensure that these processes are conducted optimally.”
This, in turn, makes the management and assessment of agents easier, explains Fick, and actively simplifies the agents' jobs by providing daily activity scheduling. “Using WFO can even allow agents to select preferred shifts, enabling managers to allocate shifts according to agent preference as far as possible,” he adds.
According to Fick, WFO provides contact centre managers with the information needed to accurately manage and predict workloads, adjust shifts and leave requests to meet the demand, and manage specific staff requirements, enabling greater effectiveness and efficiency of agents.
“By managing agents, not only on an activity basis, but on business outcomes, in terms of greater efficiency and effectiveness, and success rates as well, contact centre operators will drive down costs while improving customer satisfaction,” concludes Fick.
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