Workforce Management

WFM is a term that encompasses all the processed that a contact centre undertakes
in order to have the right number of staff with right skills available at the right time
to meet the company requirements.

Organization uses this techniques to optimize the productivity of it’s employees.

WFM includes:
- Forecasting contact volumes
- Scheduling staffs
- Intra-day management
- Creating Business continuity plan

Benefits of effective WFM:

- A better customer experience
- Cost savings
- High Employee Engagement

WFM is a repeating process and consists of five interconnected steps.

 Forecasting
 Planning
 Scheduling
 Intra-day Management
 Analytic

Forecasting

Forecasting is the first phase of WFM process, as it is the method of estimating how
many contacts we’ll receive at certain point in time.

It accurately predicts volume and average handing time using historical data and
business intelligence.

It's a dynamic process with frequent updates. Workforce managers, who are
typically responsible for forecasting, do a long term forecast to calculate how many
agents are needed for hiring plans, and frequently update shorter term forecasts to
help with agent scheduling decisions.
 Planning

Planning, which is also known as resource planning or capacity planning, is the

process of determining how many workforce resources an organization needs today,
tomorrow, and as much as five years into the future.
Capacity planning allows leaders to determine the perfect mix of employees—based
on their associated skills, capabilities, and preferences so that they will perfectly
handle customer demand.

 At the job level, capacity planning ensures that the right talent is in the right job
at the right time.
 At the company level, capacity planning ensures that the organization is neither
understaffed nor overstaffed.
 At the strategic level, capacity planning identifies the gaps between the current
and future workforce.

Scheduling

It refers to the process of creating and managing work schedules for employees.

Scheduling involves assigning shifts, break and tasks to employees based on their
skills availability preferences and business needs.

It ensures a seamless transition from one shift to another shift so that the work
remains uninterrupted.

Scheduling aims to maximize workforce utilization, adequate staffing during peak

hours, reduce labor costs, enhances employee satisfaction and productivity.

Intra-day Management

Intra-day management is also known as Real time adherence.

It is the process of monitoring real time performance with planned performance,

then taking swift corrective action.

RTA helps you pinpoint employees that are currently out of adherence with the
planned schedule.

Real-time adherence essentially shows what an agent is scheduled to be doing, and

what they are actually doing. For example, if the agent is scheduled to be on the
phone right now, but their current state shows they are on break, then they are out
of adherence. Adherence has a big impact on the ability to hit SLAs.
Intraday managers are responsible for monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs)
and calculating shrinkage on the day.

Intraday monitoring enables you to see the differences between what was originally
forecast and what actually occurs in real time for the current day.

Analytic

Even when you forecast accurately, schedule efficiently, and do a great job of real-
time management, things can still go wrong.
Planners learn from failure as much as from success, so it’s important to analyze the
results, perform a root cause analysis, and put in place the changes needed to
improve performance in the next cycle.
Plus, reports are really useful to team leaders during appraisals and 1:1s with their
agents.

Service Level

This is the percentage of calls answered within a certain threshold. So 80/20 is 80%
of calls answered in 20 seconds.

The service level formula is simply the number of calls answered within the service
level threshold divided by the number of calls offered, multiplied by 100.

This then gives you a percentage service level.

For example, if a company has an objective to answer 80% of all calls within 20
seconds, the Service Level Threshold is 20 seconds.

Formula:-
(Number of calls answered within the Threshold time/(Total Calls Offered –
Abandon calls within the Threshold time))*100

Example:

Which are the factors impact Service Level?

1. High Call Volume.
2. High AHT – ACW and Hold Time.
3. Understaffed (Scheduling Impact)
4. Absenteeism.
How can we achieve Service Level?

If we have high call volume we can ask our employees If they are willing to extent
their shift and do Over time.
- Also we can cancel all the offline activities such can pre-shift huddles, any training
or wellness activities.
- If the AHT is high we will ask the staff to reduce AHT or after call work.