What is Call Center Workforce Planning?
In some ways, call centers are in the business of managing people. Some call centers have just a handful of agents while others have thousands. Regardless of the size, agents are central to delivering the high quality experience customers expect. Call center workforce planning is the process of forecasting staffing needs based on anticipated volume or other business drivers (ex, the rollout of a new product) and then ensuring everything is in place to hire, train, schedule and manage the required agent team.
Call center workforce planning isn't an annual event – it’s ongoing. It happens every day in a call center due to regularly fluctuating call volume and changes in staffing levels. Workforce managers are constantly monitoring volume and schedules to ensure they have enough agents to handle contacts while also avoiding agents sitting idle and driving up labor costs. Therefore, call center workforce planning is a very dynamic and critical process.
Call center workforce planning used to be an onerous, cumbersome process (think lots and lots of spreadsheets), but now there are sophisticated software tools that automate these manual activities. These applications have significantly streamlined forecasting and scheduling processes to the point that workforce managers can now easily make intraday adjustments or run what-if scenarios for upcoming events in seconds. Efficient call center workforce planning ultimately means customer needs are met while minimizing labor waste.
How NICE can help
NICE CXone is the market leading call center software in use by thousands of customers of all sizes around the world to help them consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences. We provide tools that automate and streamline the call center workforce planning process. CXone is a cloud native, unified suite of applications designed to help a company holistically run its call (or contact) center operations.
NICE CXone Workforce Management empowers you to anticipate business demands and optimize your workforce with the industry’s most intelligent and accurate omnichannel forecasting engine. Patented AI and machine learning technology unlocks your workforce’s potential and harnesses the true power of your organization’s greatest asset – your people.The modernized, intuitive interface reduces the training and skillset required to create and manage forecasts and schedules and improves agility with easy intraday capabilities. As a unified component of the CXone platform, CXone WFM is the first of its kind, streamlining and minimizing administration and maintenance and the complexity of managing teams across locations, and helping you ensure that you have the right staffing plan today and into the future.
CXone includes:
Workforce Optimization – unlocks the potential of your team. These solutions include workforce management (WFM) for streamlined call center workforce planning, quality management (QM), recording and performance management (PM).
Analytics – turns insights into results by making data relevant, easy to consume and actionable to drive measurable improvements and understand the omnichannel experience customers receive. These solutions include interaction analytics, customer surveys, reporting and performance management.
Automation & Artificial Intelligence (AI) – leading-edge, intuitive technology that eliminates mundane tasks and speeds resolutions of customer issues for better business outcomes.It provides self-service, agent-assisted and fully automated alerts and actions.
CXone also includes pre-defined CRM integrations and UCaaS integrations with most leading solutions on the market. These integrations provide a holistic call center software solution capable of elevating customer experiences for companies of all sizes.