The Untapped Opportunity for WFM Automation

Many contact center directors and managers are already familiar with sophisticated workforce management solutions, like NiCE Workforce Management (WFM), that automate forecasting and scheduling. But leaders often haven’t considered other workforce management functions that are ripe for innovation in enterprise technology.

Intelligent Intraday Automation® is the NiCE solution for tapping into another opportunity to improve workforce management ROI. It leverages proactive staffing analytics to transform how contact centers handle intraday variances, solving common challenges and offering substantial benefits to contact center executives and agents alike. Intelligent Intraday Automation is a key pillar of full-lifecycle WFM.

Identify gaps after the WFM schedule is published
Despite contact center leaders’ best efforts to accurately forecast and schedule, staffing gaps often emerge after a schedule is published. The gaps may occur as a result of unplanned schedule modifications, absenteeism or unexpected shifts in demand. These changes can have a direct effect on operational costs, CSAT scores and other KPIs. When overstaffed, operational costs, such as aggregate pay to agents, rise. When a contact center is understaffed, customers face longer wait times and lower levels of customer service, which can increase churn. The duty to resolve these variances falls on contact center workforce management teams, who are tasked with forecasting staffing levels and managing headcount for each interval.

Automated staffing optimization matches fluctuating needs with employee schedule preferences and then automates schedule changes to fix gaps. It instantaneously solves complex, multi-faceted scheduling issues by identifying opportunities for self-swaps, voluntary time off, paid time off, extra hours, shift trades, and more. In doing so, it takes the challenging process of identifying and resolving staffing gaps off the shoulders of the WFM team.  

Communicate effectively about schedule changes
It’s time-consuming and inefficient to identify intraday and near-term staffing variances manually. In addition, managers or supervisors spend valuable time on inbound and outbound schedule change requests, including researching feasibility, reassigning tasks and updating the WFM system. Agents, in turn, have to wait for confirmation that changes are approved, and they’re often negatively impacted by the long wait times and inevitable errors that result from manual intraday processes.

With NiCE’s Intelligent Intraday Automation, communication is streamlined with self-service scheduling, via a mobile app and web portal, and “push” offers of schedule change opportunities. Agents can independently make preapproved intraday schedule changes that are implemented immediately, with no need for managerial mediation. And when the contact center wants to initiate schedule changes in response to projected staffing issues, the relevant offers are automatically delivered to the agent in real time via push notification, automated text message, automated email, and alert popup on the desktop. Both the pre-approved self-service options and the push offers are calibrated adjustments that are only available when such changes are beneficial to the contact center’s net staffing.

The result is considerable time saved and frustration avoided in the intraday schedule management process.

Drive individual and operational performance
The same communication and monitoring tools can also be used to address performance issues in real time on the individual and team levels. Managers, supervisors and agents can be automatically alerted to benchmarked changes in intraday KPIs (such as ACW trending high) and time-in-state status (such as tardiness, idle time, etc.). This enables a proactive, rapid response to resolve individual performance issues and can also drive independent corrective action.

Moreover, Intelligent Intraday Automation can automatically recommend occupancy adjustments, such as moving agents between different front- and back-office activities, in response to fluctuating staffing demands. This guidance takes into account an individual agent’s skills and preferences, helping workforce managers, analysts and real-time coordinators select the best employees at just the right time.

Boost agent engagement with automatic scheduling
Contact center agents can become frustrated when they feel they don’t have any control over their schedules. When they can’t get the schedule they want, wait hours or days for a schedule change approval, or miss an opportunity for time off or overtime, employee job satisfaction and engagement suffer. This adds hidden costs to manual intraday management in the form of absenteeism, reduced adherence and decreased employee retention.

Intraday automation boosts agent engagement with employee self-scheduling, which gives agents the control, flexibility, and autonomy they need to independently manage their work-life balance.  Intelligent Intraday Automation matches staffing requirements with agents’ individual needs, skills and preferences to speed staffing gap closure and achieve best-fit scheduling needs. Agents can view their schedules at any time, from anywhere, and select among automatically approved schedule change options, all of which align with the contact center’s business needs. 

Realize long-term ROI growth

The ROI of an automated, intelligent intraday management solution is substantial and has significant operational impact, including:

• 54% decrease in overtime hours
• 74% reduction in staffing variance
• 32% increase in time-off offers accepted
• 10% improvement in occupancy
• 80% reduction in manual processes

Read the full ebook to learn more about the intraday automation delivered through NiCE EEM, a solution at the heart of the NiCE WFM Suite. Discover how it positions contact centers to tap into the full ROI of WFM, ensuring that you benefit from intelligent solutions not only in long-term planning, forecasting and scheduling, but also in intraday management.