Three Tips for ROI on WFM

Dave Hoekstra of Teleopti takes a closer look at three simple tips for return on investment (ROI) on Workforce Management (WFM)

How can you leverage workforce management (WFM) to make quick-and-easy wins for your return on investment (ROI)? I would like to share three real-world scenarios that will turn into wins for your contact center.

1) Review the payroll!
Assume that everyone in your 100-agent contact center works a 40-hour work week. How often do you actually need all of your agents working all 40 hours every week? My guess is - probably not all the time.

What if you were to set up your WFM solution to give a range of hours between 38 and 40 hours? Shaving a mere two hours a week across half of your agents quickly turns into significant payroll savings: 2 hours per week x 50% of your agents x £15/hour x 52 weeks = £78,000 of payroll savings per year.

2) Evaluate forecasted demand v vacation allotment
Most contact centers only allow a blanket number of hours for paid time off (PTO) on any given day, without giving much thought to whether or not the number actually corresponds to the forecast. For example, your forecast may call for a significantly fewer number of hours in the first week of the month as compared to the last week of the month. Are you taking advantage of that lull in your call volume by allowing more vacation in the first week than in the last week of the month?

Now look at your forecasted demand and see if you can bump those vacation allotment numbers up. Not only will this allow you to target your forecast more accurately but your agents will benefit. How? Simply by being able to take additional time off to re-charge their batteries.


Be on the lookout for part-timers
Part-timers can be a gold mine for properly staffed contact centers – if used correctly. Ask your agents if anyone is interested in a part-time, flexible schedule. Set-up the agent preferences module so part-time agents can enter their requirements and then let the scheduler do the work.

There may well be agents who prefer working according to a fixed, part-time schedule but there may others willing to be flexible on a week-to-week basis, therefore allowing the scheduling team to use them to fill in gaps without committing to an excess of hours.

This is just a small sample of approaches that contact centers can take to tackle scheduling and reduce costs. I hope you will find them useful. What has worked for you? Please share them with us. I’m looking forward to hearing more.

Dave Hoekstra has 15 years of contact center experience and is a workforce management consultant at Teleopti US

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About Teleopti

Teleopti, is a global provider of workforce management (WFM) software, offering a WFM solution that is sophis¬ticated, localised and easy to use. As the largest “best-of-breed” vendor, Teleopti focuses on helping contact centres, back offices and retail stores improve customer service, employee satisfaction and profitability – through optimized, automated forecasting and scheduling.
Teleopti provides everything necessary to effectively manage staff, forecast demand, create schedules automatically, develop accurate and insightful reports and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Founded in 1992, Swedish-established Teleopti has custo¬mers in over 80 countries, numerous offices around the world – from Beijing to São Paolo – and a comprehensive global network of partners. With a record of continuous net profitability for over 20 years and with high customer satis-faction ratings, Teleopti serves as a reliable partner.

For more information, please visit TELEOPTI or contact:
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