Workforce management systems (WFM) | Organizing and Managing the Call Center

One of the most important tools available to call center managers is the workforce management system (WFM). However, despite the wealth of technology available to manage call center operations and the critical nature of workforce management, workforce management systems are used in only about 10% of call centers, according to industry sources and surveys conducted over the past few years.

The first WFM applications were relatively unsophisticated compared to current products; however, they significantly reduced the time required to do simple agent scheduling. These applications were fed data from the ACD but were normally stand-alone solutions with limited or no integration, which meant the call center scheduler did not have a particularly accurate picture of what needed to be done. The WFM system did not improve the call center managers' knowledge so much as it assisted them in reaching similar conclusions more quickly.

Workforce management in the call center has been defined as "the art and science of having the right number of CSRs available at the right time, to answer an accurately forecasted volume of incoming calls at the desired service level, with quality." A number of software products are available to accomplish this objective, and their capability to accurately predict call volume and then staff accordingly is very attractive. More call centers should incorporate this software tool to make the task easier. The 10% of call centers that do use workforce management software are among the most advanced call center operations, with high call volumes, extensive use of technology, and high productivity levels. There are reasons why many centers do not use these productivity products, however, including the following.

Cost

WFM can be expensive; systems that predict call volume and match staff schedules to that volume can cost between $50,000 and $100,000 or more.

High maintenance

The perception that a fully configured WFM system requires scheduling, feeding data in, going over the data that comes out, and providing full-time supervision of the system may be true in some cases. When a system is complex, more training is required to run it, especially when scheduling and predicting are required across multiple sites.

Cultural barriers

Greater market penetration faces "cultural" barriers, in this case, the culture of the traditional call center where more emphasis is placed on managing the call and its flow through the system than on managing the workforce.

Limited promotion of WFM product capabilities

Companies that develop and supply WFM software have not provided a complete description of the benefits, perhaps because these vendors do not see the need, or because they do not have the level of competency or industry experience to appreciate the need.

Complexity

The disparity between the actual complexity required to develop the best possible schedule and the apparent simplicity of creating a schedule is often not recognized.

Call center managers have a range of options for creating a schedule, from a manual, back-of-the envelope calculation to using formulas in a simple spreadsheet with a special calculator to input the center's variables to ultimately using a five- or six-figure full-fledged computer program. Achieving the highest level of workforce productivity does require some powerful software, and it will be expensive.