Johannesburg, 31 May 2022
In any large organisation, the contact centre is a major strategic asset to the business, particularly in a world where the customer experience (CX) is fast becoming one of the key metrics for business success. To ensure an effective CX, it is necessary to implement workforce optimisation tools, as these are vital not only from a CX perspective, but also to enable the business to keep its labour costs under control.
Workforce optimisation (WFO) suites allow a company to get the most from its contact centre technology, explains Brad Brews, Sales Executive at Q-Connect. It enables a business to deliver the very best CX in a way that is cost-effective for the enterprise. WFO tools, he adds, include workforce management, performance management, recording, quality management, speech analytics and many others.
“In the modern environment, where remote work has become the de facto norm, it is more important than ever to be able to manage employee schedules and monitor staff. The relevant WFO tools can monitor staff in real-time, wherever they are working, and can be used to ensure that management knows what they are doing and whether they are following their schedule,” says Brews.
“In this way, team leaders have a clear view of how their staff are working, can monitor e-mails, link in CRM systems and effectively obtain data for both forecasting and scheduling purposes.”
Among the key benefits of a workforce management system, notes Ric Wilson, Senior Product Manager at Q-Connect, is that it saves team leaders significant time and allows for effective monitoring. It also helps to improve productivity, as agents have the ability to request additional coaching on an area they may be struggling with.
“We also have a gamification module that is dynamic and encourages agents to challenge one another to duels. Winners of such duels are rewarded with points that can be exchanged for small bonuses, such as a half-day off,” says Wilson.
“The typical feedback we receive around this module is that agents really enjoy making a game of what they do, as it ensures that work is much more fun, and ultimately, happier agents work better and provide a more effective CX.”
According to Brews, this plays into the long-held belief that the more effectively you look after your own agents, the more likely they will be to look after your customers in a better manner.
“Agent churn is a massive expense for the average contact centre, as it is very difficult to recoup the money spent on hiring and training, if the agent leaves the organisation too quickly,” he says.
“However, with the Q-Connect WFO suite, employees have the ability to bid on specific shifts, swap shifts if they need, leverage analytics and benefit from gamification. This helps to turn a job that can be quite boring into one that is much more enjoyable and fun, reducing churn and improving the CX further, all while still ensuring that you get full value from their working time.”
As Wilson also points out, a recent study in New Zealand indicated that, while the average agent life cycle is around 18 months, those centres that implemented gamification extended this by up to an additional six months’ increase in the agent lifespan.
“Ultimately, our WFO solution provides forecasting, planning, scheduling and real-time agent tracking in order to ensure that all agents and supervisors are productive, engaged in their work and delivering an exceptional customer experience. These same tools will also assure you that you are staffing the right agents, with the right skills, at the right time, while helping the business to plan and manage the performance of staffing resources across all customer channels,” he concludes.
For more information contact Brad Brews on (+27) 66 222 6566 or e-mail brad@qconnect.co.za, go to www.qconnect.co.za, WhatsApp (+27) 81 356 1566, e-mail info@qconnect.co.za or call (+27) 78 893 7428.
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