Call centers spend 60-70% of their overhead operating costs in disbursing salary to their staff, so it makes sense to utilize these valuable resources in an efficient manner. Companies look to achieve this goal with the help of WFM software. This is the reason the WFM technology is a must have in any contact center setting. The WFM technology is also undergoing constant changes to keep in touch with the needs of the call centers. There are advanced options such as agent scheduling and holiday bidding for agents. Both these options offer the employees freedom to choose work hours and holidays that would meet the lifestyle needs. The WFM technology not only provides more freedom to the employees over their work, but it also reduces a lot of overhead costs that would go into administration. As Workforce Management software is such an important element for the call centers, so its choice should be done after much consideration. Some of the factors to consider when choosing a WFM software or technology include:

Virtualization: There are many call centers that have offices in various parts of the same country or in different countries. Administration for such call centers is a nightmare and there is need to interlink all the centers. For the last five years this has been an area of concern for many organizations. Technologies such as VoIP has ushered a new ray of hope for interlinking of different centers spanned across locations. With proper virtualization there will be equal distribution of work across centers. In the earlier days, one center used to be overloaded with work while the employees in another center sat idle. This will not happen if the WFM you choose has multi site integration capability.

Real Time Adherence (RTA): RTA is another essential feature for WFM software to have. RTA is a feature that helps schedule the agents accurately by anticipating call handling capacity of an agent. This capacity is calculated to come up with a work schedule that would be compatible with the agent’s performance. RTA provides the supervisors information about the number of calls an agent is receiving and their duration. If any of the factors is not as per the anticipated performance, then the agent can be alerted by the supervisor.

Multichannel: Call centers are no longer restricted to offering support for voice calls. They have taken on the responsibility of handling customer chats, social media messages and emails. So, the customer contact points are varied and to support this WFM software should have multimedia support. Multimedia WFM systems allow easy scheduling and forecasting of resources across multiple contact channels. Such WFMs save time by combining calls and emails, etc. In the end it saves costs.

Call Routing Based on Skills: This technology would allow the routing of customer calls to agents with a proven set of skills or competencies. This means the customer gets suggestions from an agent who has appropriate knowledge. This skill based routing is evident in contact centers offering multilingual support. The call is routed to an agent with that specific language skill. WFM software should have skills scheduling option to help company with skills based routing. This means the planners can manage service levels based on certain skill types. They can also quickly understand whether or not there is right number of agents to handle a certain contact type. The management of skills is a very complex process, it is not just about accounting for each skill. There can be multiple skills of a single agent. The agents with multiple skills allow equal distribution of work. The WFM with skills based routing capability will run through the system using some routing rules. Based on these rules and the skills of agen ts they will find the right agent for a specific call. If there is a deficiency in certain skills than the management can easily understand the situation and organize training sessions to meet the service levels.

Workforce Management software is an immensely important technology for modern day call centers. It helps reduce the stress on administration. It can also save a lot of money and please the customers too. Before making a final decision on the choice of WFM technology take certain factors into account.