Top Contact Center Workforce Management Blog Posts 2018

Workforce management is a blend of art and science—and without a doubt, an effective WFM strategy is vital to the successful operation of any contact center. What was on the minds of contact center WFMers in 2018? Our five most-read WFM blog posts are below.

Weaknesses of an WFMer
Interviewer: What are your greatest strengths?
Answer: I will work hard for you and I know what I’m doing. Go ahead, ask me anything!
Interviewer: Okay, what are your greatest weaknesses?
This is not the interview part I prefer (does anyone?), but it’s a fair question we should all expect at some point. I’m humbled by the things I see on my own list.

Consultative WFM
A number of years ago, I was performing a WFM assessment for a company in Arizona. In the middle of a meeting with the WFM analysts, I asked how their relationship was with the frontline leaders and reps on the call center floor. Silence. Thinking I had not expressed myself clearly enough, I reworded my question. Still silence. Finally, one of the analysts sheepishly spoke up: “We leave in pairs.”

Insights from the SWPP Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award Nominees
The 2018 SWPP Annual Conference in Nashville kicked off on Sunday, June 3rd. I love the all-WFM-all-the-time format of this conference. Every break, every lunch, and every session is devoted to forecasting, scheduling, real-time adherence, staffing models, power-of-one, net staff, Erlang… and this goes on for three days. I can’t wait to get out on that vendor showcase floor and find out what is new in the world of workforce management software.

Scheduling Resources Through Communication and Collaboration
As the primary architect for Community WFM, I’m always looking for ways to innovate our workforce management solution. Sometimes the opportunity to innovate is staring us right in the face. We all know our industry is in a state of constant change; customer demographics are changing, customers’ expectations are increasing, and more than ever, customers want to communicate through modern channels like mobile devices, web chat and SMS text messaging. It should be no surprise then that our next-generation workforce would expect the same convenience and flexibility when communicating with their workforce and management teams.

Two Steps That Will Improve Your WFM Outcome
Most of us WFMers work to achieve a service goal for every single interval of every single day. We do this by reforecasting regularly and optimizing schedules until there’s nothing left of extra capacity. But sometimes management is only looking to meet service levels at the monthly rate, and they are not down in the weeds with the WFM team every day. This means they may not react so harshly if the goal is missed for a day or week, but once the month-end report comes in, that Service Level result starts getting all kinds of attention.