5 Things To Look For When Selecting A Workforce Management Partner

By Roger Woolley, CommunityWFM

While there are likely workforce management (WFM) processes in place at your contact center, many contact centers are continuing to rely on spreadsheets to manage staffing requirements. Making changes to any operation takes time, however, implementing a WFM solution has many short-and long-term benefits that can greatly improve the productivity and efficiency of your contact center.

You may think this sounds great but are worried about the amount of time it will take to get buy-in from the executive team and other key stakeholders. In this article, I’ll walk through what things to look for in a WFM solution and the provider. Having this information will help ease stress and decrease the effort required to secure buy-in from stakeholders.

Make Sure Mobile Is A Part Of Your WFM Solution And Strategy

There are 3.5B smartphone users in the world. According to RescueTime, smartphone usage is 3 hours and 15 minutes per day on average. Experts expect this number to increase, meaning smartphones aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. For this reason, companies that do not think about internally leveraging mobile technologies as it relates to their WFM strategy will miss out on major opportunities to keep pace with the escalating demands of customers and agents.

By having mobile at the center of your WFM solution and strategy, the contact center is enabled to respond quicker to the dynamics of unexpected customer and agent behavior. Receiving updates and alerts, quickly responding to changing conditions, more consistent delivery of customer service, and controlling expenses are all things that can be done via smartphone, allowing the contact center to remain nimble. Having a mobile WFM solution is imperative to the success of a contact center.

Rank Your Must-Have Features

Once you’ve found a mobile WFM solution, be sure to think through some of the additional features you’d like to see, understanding what matters most for the contact center as a whole. Do you have a staff that struggles to utilize technology? In that case, you might want to prioritize ease of use as a must-have feature. If you’re looking to reduce manual processes and increase efficiency, you might consider automation as a must-have rather than a nice to have. Other key features to consider include shift bidding, adaptive intraday management, integrated communication channels, and agent engagement capabilities. All of these are important features required to optimize your workforce and manage costs. With that in mind, make sure you have your list of must-have and nice to have features ready to go to help make your final decision.

Ask About Onboarding

Workforce Management is a complex software tool that requires in-depth training to be successful. When selecting a WFM solution, be sure to ask about the onboarding process and what is included during this process. This is especially important if your executive team is expecting immediate results. Rather than wait and see what happens, connect with others to understand what their onboarding experience was like. Longer implementation processes combined with a lack of attention from the solutions provider can impact the speed at which the solution is being used and cause additional stress within the contact center.

Don’t Forget About Prep Work

Whether it’s WFM technology or another key software investment, there is always some prep work involved. While not every solution requires a lot of up-front prep work, WFM solutions impact many employees and require a cross-functional team on the selection committee. This responsibility shouldn’t be yours alone. Rather, the solutions provider’s sales and onboarding team should work with you to understand the specific prep work and challenges you have. Don’t let prep work be the reason you refrain from implementing a WFM solution.

Look Beyond Features In The Solution

While features are important, be sure to take the time to understand how the solutions provider will ensure success for you and the contact center after implementation. Spending time, money, and resources toward implementing the solution will feel like a waste of time if there’s no plan for continued education and post-optimization. Leverage your customer success manager to answer questions, engage employees, and provide information on the benefits of the solution to reinforce the vendor selection.

Choosing a WFM solution is a difficult task so make sure you have a well thought out process with the right partner. Think beyond the sales process alone and invest in a partner and solution that will benefit your company for the long term. Taking the time to do so will help set you up for success.

About The Author

Roger Woolley has more than 20 years of marketing experience with a special interest and successful background in Workforce Optimization, Customer Analytics, Workforce Management, and Customer Experience software. Before CommunityWFM Roger was the CMO for TeamSupport and also has held key positions with Verint Systems as the VP, Solutions Marketing where he managed marketing strategies, lead generation campaigns, competitive analysis, and sales enablement across multiple product portfolios. Roger has worked with hundreds of contact center executives to optimize their customer service technologies and implement omni-channel strategies.