Workforce Management: Five Ways to Achieve Service Excellence for Your Financial Institution

For financial institutions to be successful, they must employ effective methods of customer acquisition and retention. More and more, the contact center is a critical component of these efforts. To be successful, however, it’s is important to recognize the demands of your customers. Specifically, they expect three basic things when they reach out to you:

• Calls to be answered quickly
• To deal with someone who has enough knowledge to respond to their requests
• To be addressed by a person who is cheerful, motivated and responsive

Believe it or not, this is not as easy as it sounds. In order to provide this type of customer-focused service delivery, you must have a workforce management system in place at your contact center that helps you meet your customers’ expectations.

Specifically, there are five key attributes to look for in your workforce management system.

1. Ensure Forecasting Accuracy
   
   The bedrock of success in the contact center is its ability to consistently meet both short-term and long-term goals. Workforce management provides the insight necessary for contact centers to build comprehensive, effective plans by first providing accurate forecasts of contact volume and resource requirements.
   Since even small variations from the plan can have a tremendous impact on the performance of the center, it is crucial that organizations use a workforce management system with an effective forecasting algorithm.
   
   
2. Enable Continuous, Intraday Improvement
   
   Advances in workforce management have given companies the ability to use a variety of flexible start and end times for each agent, depending on forecasted demand, agent expertise and agent preferences. With this, companies must have tools that show the impact of schedule adjustments, and allow flexible changes to be made on a moment's notice.
   Workforce management systems that ensure top-notch customer service offer continuous reporting and provide managers with the flexibility to make scheduling changes with rapid precision, down to the quarter-hour.
   
   
3. Cultivate and Schedule Multiskilled Agents
   
   With the growth of self-service tools, front-line agents are increasingly expected to have a wider range of expertise. Cultivating and then properly deploying skilled, expert representatives will allow the center to effectively address complicated customer inquiries. But scheduling agents based on expertise can be difficult.
   Workforce management solutions that take a holistic view of the multiskilled agent will deliver the greatest value on agent's expertise.
   
   
4. Empower Agents with Self-Service Technology
   
   How do you go about retaining agents when they consider jumping ship for a small raise? Money alone is neither a sustainable nor a unique advantage. Creating a work environment that empowers agents and gives them control over their destiny can pay tremendous dividends. Not only will agents see themselves as a key long-term component of your strategy, but better morale leads to greater productivity and a more pleasant experience for customers.
   Workforce management systems don’t need to be dictatorial. They should provide agents with the ability to input their preferences and bid for schedule slots, including requesting vacations and time off.
   
   
5. Make the Most of Constraints
   
   Every contact center manager wants the resources for preface service to be delivered 100 percent of the time. But in the real world, all organizations face resource constraints. Workforce management can alleviate many of these constraints and create opportunities where in the past there would only be headaches.
   Workforce management systems that develop schedules based on several work groups blended into a single queue can add power and flexibility to the center without introducing expensive redundancy.

By ensuring that your workforce management system has these key components, you’re on your way to providing your potential and existing customers with the superior service they expect and deserve. To learn more, download our white paper, “Achieving Service Excellence With Workforce Management,” by visiting us online at www.iex.com/fst.