NICE has added an Inventory Insights module to its True to Interval (TTI) Analytics workforce management (WFM) solution.
The TTI Analytics solution logs contact center interactions in the interval they occur.
That has proven to be a popular module amongst contact center forecasters. After all, service teams typically log each contact in the reporting period it’s completed. However, many contacts will begin in the prior period.
As such, contact centers – especially large operations with 15-minute reporting intervals – previously had no way to accurately capture demand in the period it begins.
TTI Analytics solves this problem, and NICE has now expanded the solution with Inventory Insights.
The new feature takes that active reporting into the back-office to enable a common planning interval.
In doing so, contact centers may better manage high interaction complexity across customer-facing conversations and related non-customer-facing activities.
As a result, NICE hopes that customers can unlock new cross-office efficiencies that will drive “improved bottom-line performance”.
Sharing more, Barry Cooper, President of the CX Division at NICE, said: “Organizations have come to NICE with a critical need to merge the back office with CX operations.
We’ve not only delivered on that need but also opened the door for CX organizations to benefit from the entire suite of WEM solutions now available to the back office.
According to DMG Consulting, such moves are critical. Its research finds that integrating contact center and back office operations is a “top three priority” for business leaders in 2024.
Indeed, back-office tasks – such as inputting customer data, revising records, and processing orders or payments – significantly impact on contact center efficiency.
After all, an efficient back office allows contact centers to spot potential problems and solve them before customers notice and reach out.
In this sense, it enables pre-emptive customer service and expands the value-add of WFM – which is slowly stepping out of the shadows and into the heart of contact center operations.
Those are critical steps, according to Donna Fluss, President of DMG Consulting. “What’s clear is that the old ways of doing business are gone,” she said.
“While phone calls continue to be used (and will be for the foreseeable future), WFM solutions must be enhanced to address previously unforeseen complexity in contact centers, back-offices, and other operating environments.
The needs of 21st-century contact centers are different from prior generations, and WFM vendors are modernizing their applications to give enterprises the necessary functionality to deliver a great CX.
The TTI Analytics innovation exemplifies this modernization – and its capabilities go beyond forecasting “conventional” front- and back-office activities.
For instance, it also enhances a planner’s accuracy in assessing whether agents are handling asynchronous contacts that span multiple or non-sequential intervals.
These exciting new possibilities for WFM teams exemplify NICE’s status as one of three stalwart workforce engagement management (WEM) vendors alongside Verint and Calabrio.
Also, by pairing these advanced WEM capabilities with CXone, NICE further differentiates its CCaaS offering in the increasingly crowded space, where it claims to have the “industry’s highest win rate”.
Now, as many of its CCaaS rivals also aim to bolster their WEM applications, innovations like Inventory Insights and TTI will help NICE maintain a more mature, capable WFM platform.
