Workforce Optimization for Customer Service

Manage and maintain the productivity of your workforce from a single application using Workforce Optimization for Customer Service. With this application, you can efficiently route work to your team, manage your team's skills and schedules, and monitor their performance.

Watch this short video to see how managers use Workforce Optimization for Customer Service.

The application is available on configurable workspaces. Administrators can configure and customize the workspace using the application capabilities to complete the service objectives efficiently.

Workforce Optimization for Customer Serviceenables you to:

• Assess real-time operations and performance of teams and agents across different channels and queues.
• Keep track of ongoing work and provide real-time help to team members for better customer experience.
• Helps organizations ensure that their managers only see the data and views of relevant teams
• Monitor and measure team performance and provide feedback using assessments.
• Predict and recommend skills for agents.
• Identify opportunities to coach and train your teams.

Manage and monitor the real-time work being done by your agents across different channels and queues. Provide timely help to your team members to solve cases faster and help with complex customer issues. Coach your teams so that they gain the skills that let you address the demands from your customers. Efficiently schedule your teams to provide better coverage with integrated channel management.

Figure 1. Manager workflow

As a manager, you can monitor the demand for agents and skills in your organization to resolve issues. Assess agent skills, identify areas where they need improvement, and provide training to enhance their skill set. Track your team's performance and manage the schedule of all agents in your assignment group from a unified location.

As an agent, you can manage your own schedule, access the schedule of your peers, and request time off or shift swaps.

Manager workspace landing page

The landing page offers a real-time view of key performance metrics, team updates, and real-time alerts that improve collaboration. View metrics using various score cards, donuts, gauges, line charts, and bar charts with multiple data sets. For more information, see .

Channel management

Manage pending work items from customers, manage the daily work routine of agents, balance the workload between agents adhering to promised SLAs, and automatically route and assign work items to agents based on their availability, capacity, and skills. Monitor your teams in real time and join their chat conversations to help when there is a need.

Using Channel Management, you can also:

• Review the real-time performance of your teams across various channels and queues.
• Review pending work items and manually allocate work items to available agents.
• Monitor the actual work being performed by your team members.
• Monitor the status of the queues.
• Track and change the real-time presence and capacity utilization of your team members.

For more information, see Channel Management in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service.

Scheduling

Manage the scheduling for your organization from a central location. Create shift plans and schedule plans, assign agents to shifts, and publish the schedules. Manage teams' approvals, swap agents' shifts, and forecast agent staffing scenarios. Access your team's calendar to see which agents are scheduled for coverage and which agents have taken time off.

Using Scheduling, you can also:

• Assign agents to shifts.
• Define break time.
• Preview and publish team schedule.
• Approve agent time-off or shift-swap requests.
• Create on-call shifts and assign primary, secondary rotation groups to handle escalation scenarios.

For more information, see Scheduling in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service.

Schedule Adherence

Access your team's calendar to see which agents adhered to their planned schedules and make timely decisions to increase your team's performance by setting expected adherence targets.

Using Schedule Adherence, you can also:

• Configure and adjust the schedule adherence and conformance formulas and properties so that you can customize them for your organization.
• Access the schedule of all of your teams from one location and gain insights on whether your team is complying with published schedules.
• Analyze the historical time attendance of your team members.
• View planned versus actual historical data for your team and individual agents.

For more information, see Schedule Adherence in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service

Demand Forecasting

Forecast the demand for teams and predict resources based on historical data.

Using Demand Forecasting, you can also:

• View the agent staffing forecast at 15, 30, and 60-minute intervals on the team calendar.
• Adjust and prioritize schedules, tasks, breaks, and meetings for agents without impacting service objectives.
• Use historical data to forecast contact volumes (cases and interactions) at 15-minute intervals.

For more information, see Demand Forecast in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service.

Teams

Monitor performance trends for your teams using Key Performance Indicator (KPI) groups. Create a set of KPIs and apply them to all groups within a team and assess team performance from one location.

Using Teams, you can also:

• Identify all the teams that you manage as well as the ones you have visibility into.
• Analyze the KPIs that are crucial for your team.
• Drill into agents within each team and monitor their performance.
• Access each agent's profile to view details such as their manager, peers, and assignment groups.
• Drill down into each agent's skills or suggest them for coaching.

For more information, see Teams in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service.

Coaching and skills assessment

Enhance the quality of work done by your agents using Coaching. Assess agent skills and recommend the skills that they require to resolve issues. Identify coaching opportunities based on the recommendations, set coaching plans to improve their skills, and train agents to acquire those skills.

Using Coaching, you can also:

• Automate the scoring, grading, and assessment of agent skills.
• Use coaching opportunities to create assessments.
• Track training assigned to agents based on their assessments.
• Analyze the skill gap and recommend training.
• Assign courses to agents from third-party learning management systems (LMS), such as Udemy, Pluralsight, and Cornerstone OnDemand.

For more information, see: Coaching in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service.