The truth is, customers don’t care if you are understaffed. Disruptions or deviations from the day’s forecast will always occur. The key question is how will you respond?
Intraday Staffing is an important component of any effective intraday automation platform that provides you with an optimized workforce based on customer demand – whether it’s lower or greater than expected.
Here are three use cases for intraday staffing that most contact centers experience today:
#1: Customer demand unexpectedly spikes.
It’s an all too familiar scenario: marketing launches a new campaign, but doesn’t coordinate with the contact center, or a new product launch doesn’t go as expected, resulting in unexpected volume.
In the contact center, things happen that cause customer demand to be greater – or lower – than expected. It’s the nature of the business. In either case, the result is often the same: lost revenue and a poor customer experience.
In most contact centers, real-time teams monitor reports from existing systems such as WFM and the ACD, but the process is slow and manual. Centers cannot react fast enough to handle the excess call volume and the customer experience suffers as a result.
Intraday Automation uses data from existing systems to trigger real-time actions based on events and conditions automatically. Agents are automatically offered voluntary time-off (VTO) or overtime (OT) until net staffing thresholds are satisfied.
#2: Low call volume creates excess labor costs.
In most contact centers today, WFM teams manually evaluate VTO administration, which is a reactive, slow and costly process.
Intraday Automation triggers real-time VTO schedule offers at the agent level based on real-time data and tailored to your specific business rules. The result is significant cost savings and agent engagement benefits.
With Intraday Automation, centers have the flexibility and power to implement whatever they choose. (For example, VTO can be automatically offered to high performers as an incentive.) Alerting agents of these offers earlier can have a significant impact on occupancy and operating expenses.
#3: Manual processes are limiting.
Intraday Staffing and automation is all about changing from manual and reactive processes to a real-time frontline that can quickly respond to any event or condition.
In most contact centers today, workforce managers must manually communicate staffing decisions or shift agents between channels, which is typically done just once a day.
Intraday Automation replaces manual processes, enabling staffing and channel adjustments to occur in real time throughout the day.
Agents receive real-time offers through text message, through e-mail alerts on their desktops or via mobile app. Workforce management updates are automatically triggered and made based on an agent’s acceptance of a schedule.
Not only is agent engagement and productivity improved, but the manual task of staffing is automated and done in real time, which has a huge cost savings benefit.
The Value of Intraday Staffing
A lot of contact center technology in the market today is good for users, but not necessarily optimal for your business. Intraday Staffing is unique because it benefits everyone by enabling you to optimize every staffing decision in your center in real time. The customer experience is protected (better for customers), costs are reduced (better for the business), and agents are rewarded (better for employee retention). As a result, Intraday Automation is one of the most valuable, low-risk investments contact centers and back-office operations can make.