Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C., a specialist in call center industry research, has the results of a 3-month study into Contact Center Workforce Management Practices sponsored by Aspect, Witness Systems and Pipkins, Inc.
The research was performed in partnership with Mike Trotter (Purdue University), Dr. Jodie Monger (President, Customer Relationship Metrics) and Scott Davis (Principal, Customer Cubed, LLC).
The study asked participants questions about performance metrics, WFM resources utilized, processes, tools utilized, and satisfaction. It was the satisfaction question that drew the most negative response -- 41% surveyed were not pleased with their workforce management software.
Other key findings include:
While the penetration of licensed workforce management software to support the scheduling function is quite high (88%), 52% do not use licensed workforce management software to support performance reporting and 25% do not use licensed workforce management software to support forecasting.
Respondents place a much greater emphasis on accessibility metrics (service level, average speed of answer, percent of calls abandoned) than on efficiency (agent occupancy, agent utilization) and workforce management effectiveness (agent adherence, forecast accuracy, schedule accuracy) metrics. Using the performance metrics provided the research team was not able to create an effective balanced scorecard for 34% of the respondents.
62% of respondents post new schedules at least every month, (39% weekly, 7% daily), the remaining 38% post new schedules as needed.
A significant opportunity for improvement in both the workforce management process (37% not satisfied) and with workforce management software (41% not satisfied) exists.
