Written by Susan Hash Accurate staffing and scheduling has been a long-time challenge for contact centers. Let’s face it, getting the right people in the right places at the right times doing the right things has become even more of a delicate balancing act over the past decade with the proliferation of contact channels, more complex products and services, ever-increasing customer demands and the rapid pace of change in today’s global business environment.

Fortunately, many organizations recognize the impact that effective workforce management (WFM) has on customer satisfaction and loyalty. According to a recent ICMI study, more than half of the 361 centers surveyed give WFM the attention it deserves by having a dedicated individual or team in place to ensure accurate forecasting and scheduling.

And, overall, most of the survey respondents (70.8%) rated their scheduling efforts as effective or very effective. This, in part, can be attributed to the use of automated WFM systems (in 51.9% of centers) and other scheduling tools, such as performance reporting tools, Erlang add-ins and forecasting software. In addition, managers are becoming more creative in their staffing and scheduling approaches. While some of the more common practices include using permanent part-time agents, seasonal workers, outsourcing and home agents, some centers are taking more innovative approaches, such as calling on reserve agents or swat teams (former agents who can be called in to handle contact volume spikes and peak periods), and staff-sharing, in which two centers with counter-cyclical peak seasons (often in different industries) share staff to help balance each other’s seasonal call volume peaks and valleys.

Other centers have found that offering a little variety in schedules can be an appealing alternative for agents. For instance, 41.6% of centers offer a 4x10 work week while others offer compressed schedule options (i.e., longer hours on some days, shorter hours on others). It seems that many centers are effectively conquering some of the age-old staffing challenges caused by budget constraints, agent attrition and rapid change. ICMI’s Contact Center Staffing and Scheduling Practices Report will be released later this month.