The emergence of integrated quality, workforce and performance management solutions brings about an opportunity to automate and better manage business processes in the contact center. Enabling these previously separate systems to share information and coordinate activities allows for the creation of automated processes, making them more efficient. It also enables improvements in process effectiveness by providing relevant information and ensuring they are followed consistently.
This is best illustrated through an example.
The director in a hypothetical contact center observes on his performance dashboard that service levels are lower then forecasted. Even more importantly they are on a downward trend. The director assigns a task to the center’s analyst to investigate why this is occurring and how to reverse the trend.
Receiving notification of his assignment, the analyst uses his dashboard to drill down into information from the workforce management solution into the underlying operational metrics that impact service level performance. He discovers that wait times for the blue widget service queue are significantly above forecast due to unexpected call volumes. This appears to be the major factor behind the service level issue. He passes the task on to the quality monitoring team to find out what is actually going on.
The quality monitoring team leader has already defined categories for capturing interactions involving all the many colors of widget service requests. He selects those for the blue widgets and initiates an automated root-cause analysis. The results show that a large majority of the interactions involve discussions on the widget’s overheat prevention feature. Listening to a few of the interactions shows that a major heat wave occurring in the eastern area of the country is causing the widgets to overheat and driving the increase in calls.
The team leader transfers the task on to the marketing department with a suggestion to issue an emergency product bulletin. The marketing specialist agrees and issues an emergency bulletin to all blue widget users explaining the correct operation of the products overheat prevention features.
In a matter of hours blue widget call volumes are decreasing, wait times are improving and service level is recovering. Early notification of the developing condition, quick discovery of its underlying causes and prompt action to correct the issue prevented this from becoming a major operational problem. Major staffing adjustments and agent overtime expenses were avoided as a result. Blue widget customers were also very impressed by the company’s proactive communication involving the heat wave.
Automating processes and improving their efficiency and effectiveness is just one of the benefits provided by an integrated quality, workforce and performance management system. Download the free white paper Integrated Quality, Workforce and Performance Management Solutions – Defining the Business Benefit to find out more.