Workforce optimisation or WFO is what essentially drives your contact centres. It makes sure agents are available to handle current demand levels. It maintains quality, and it also motivates agents to go the extra mile – taking up difficult shifts or exceeding their productivity targets. But how do you balance the WFO needs of inbound and outbound processes in a blended contact centre?
While there are similarities, it is important to know about the nuances of using WFO in a blended contact centre environment to make the most of your processes and technologies.
The Challenges of Using WFO in a Blended Environment
The business case for a singular centralised WFO is clear — there is no technology clutter, you interact with only one vendor, and there are minimal licensing hassles. However, because the operations of inbound and outbound are fundamentally different, you could face a number of challenges.
First, there are varied types of data to analyse before you perform forecasting. Automatic call distribution (ACD) in inbound and automatic diallers in outbound will generate different kinds of data that must be transformed before they are fed into analytics. Second, performance KPIs also differ for inbound and outbound processes. In the former, agents are evaluated based on customer experience and service level, but the latter is more focused on volumes and conversion.
Finally, inbound and outbound often have varying shift structures, with 24/7 availability a norm for inbound while outbound operates in the regular 9-to-5 cycle.
A WFO solution, as well as your workforce optimisation strategy, should recognise these differences as they co-exist in a blended contact centre environment.
How to Use WFO for Outbound + Inbound Contact Centres?
The first step for leveraging WFO effectively in blended contact centres is to acknowledge the difference between outbound and inbound requirements and factor them into your various WFO components — namely scheduling, quality management, business intelligence, performance management (including training), and employee engagement.
Once this is in place, you can:
- Specify key metrics for outbound and inbound calls to be auto-recorded by WFO software
- Create shifts as per your business need and inbound/outbound customer behaviour
- Adopt an integrated solution with an ACD and auto-dialler systems
- Utilise advanced analytics that accommodates modelling for both inbound and outbound data
- Integrate with existing systems like your CRM, customer data platform (CDP), etc
- Train employees on using agent assist tools for inbound and outbound scenarios
- Define processes for measuring inbound and outbound performance, including goal setting
These steps will help you maximise the value from workforce optimisation in a blended environment, leading to unique benefits
The Unique Benefits of Using WFO in a Blended Environment
Blended contact centres give you the opportunity to cut down idle time by swapping agents between inbound and outbound as per demand. An effective WFO strategy, backed by a robust set of tools, will give you visibility into the entire workforce so that you can train agents for a breadth of calling scenarios and always have a ready, highly skilled labour-pool at hand.
