Prioritizing your agents’ job satisfaction in a contact center environment is an important piece of a well-functioning business model. Employees who have all the tools they need to perform their jobs feel a sense of autonomy. This results in a positive work environment. As a result, your customers receive excellent service from your company.
Workforce Management Software 101
Workforce management software is simply software that increases the efficiency of daily contact center operations. Common features you will find in workforce management software include:
- Scheduling capabilities
- BI and performance analytics
- Call and screen recording
- AI
- Unified CRM
- Remote capabilities
- Agent Desktop
- eLearning
- Agent scripting
These features ensure that agents get the proper training and coaching they need. They also provide flexibility as agents are able to view their own schedules and submit related requests on their own. E-learning capabilities give agents the confidence they need to do their jobs. A simple to use workforce management software should be easy to learn and navigate.
What is Workforce Engagement Management Software?
Workforce engagement management software is what organizations provide their employees to help execute their business workflows. This type of software is different from what employers would use in the past.
In the past, employees were barred from seeing data that could benefit their performance. They had little to no insight into other departments they worked with. Scheduling changes were often a surprise.
Now, with the right software, employees can access their call handling times, resolution rates, and even grasp a big picture of a company’s health. Agents can have more control over their schedules and have easy access to benefit information.
Why is Workforce Engagement Management Software Important?
Agents can now be more engaged than ever. They can manage their own schedules, communicate effectively with anyone in the company, and request IT services through ticketing systems. Not only do these features relieve the workload off of managers, but they also provide the employee a sense of autonomy.
The leading workforce engagement management software provides agents with quality analytics to boost job performance. Call recording combined with handle times and other readily visible statistics improve the productivity of the one-on-one sessions managers have with agents.
The Benefits of an Engaged Agent
An engaged agent can reap significant benefits for your company. When an agent feels appreciated and valued, their job performance skyrockets. In addition, job morale increases. Studies show that one negative employee can have a significant impact in the workplace. It can cost businesses up to $3 billion dollars a year!
While it may not be possible to satisfy the all the desires of every single agent or staff, it is possible to show agents that you value them. Knowing that your employer truly appreciates you changes the dynamics of the workplace environment, despite the negativity from other people. Here are several ways that leading workforce optimization software systems help agents stay engaged and provide top level services.
New Employee Onboarding
How efficient is your HR department? Slow responses and having to wait for the least busy HR representative could worry prospective agents. Acquiring top talent is an achievement for any company. The benefits they provide are unlimited as they give top tier service and set an example for other agents.
Your workflow management system software should be able to automate plenty of tasks for the human resources department. One example is payroll. How does your HR handle payroll? Do prospective agents have to interact back and forth between human resource representatives through endless emails to submit banking information?
The right workforce engagement software can help automate things like payroll, benefits, and tax documents for your human resources department. There is no more need to wait around for someone to get back to an agent. Using top of the line technology leaves prospective employees confident about the new company they are going to work for.
Agent Coaching
How do you currently address knowledge gaps in struggling new employees? What helps you identify low call quality after an agent and customer interaction? Your workforce engagement software should be able to identify call quality in several ways so that your managers can better guide agents on best business practices.
High-quality workforce engagement software utilizes a new feature commonly known as speech recognition. This allows managers to identify high-risk calls and assist agents who might feel unsure of how to proceed. Speech recognition technology can alert your managers to any calls that require their attention. This increases customer satisfaction and leaves agents feeling confident about doing their jobs.
In addition to identifying problematic calls, workforce engagement software provides the data you need to improve agent performance. Using speech recognition features, you can easily spot where an agent might need help. Your future one-on-one meetings will instantly provide insightful information to your agent so that they are able to perform their jobs at top level.
Working Remotely
The working environment has forever changed. Shortly after COVID-19 disrupted our world, employers knew they had to make big decisions very quickly if they wanted to keep companies afloat. Employees from nearly every industry were sent to work from home to keep operations functioning as smoothly as possible.
As a result, many companies have seen the benefits working remotely can provide. Although there are some drawbacks, working from home can provide a significant savings for many businesses as the need for renting office space has practically diminished. Companies are starting to offer prospective employees either hybrid schedules or 100% remote work.
This is an attractive feature for most applicants because they save on transportation costs and save time by not having to wake up extra early to get dressed and drive. Giving your agents this option ensures that you won’t lose your top talent to other companies who are freely providing these options for their employees. The times are certainly changing.
However, working from home requires several important steps to follow. One is a secure environment. This is especially true for employees who handle sensitive data. In order to ensure your remote workers operate in a secure environment, the workforce engagement system software you use must provide high quality cyber security features.
One small mistake can cost you over $200,000.00. If hackers infiltrate your network, they can easily steal thousands of pieces of customer financial data. All of your customers’ data would be considered compromised. This is an area that no business can afford to skimp on. Ensure your software is compliant with several IT security certifications so that you can rest assured that your customers’ information is safe.
Agent Autonomy
Contact centers can have extremely high turnover rates. The average percentage of turnover is 26% for full-time employees and a whopping 33% for part-time employees. However, ensuring that your agents are engaged can significantly reduce that risk for you.
In order to increase agent autonomy, your workforce engagement system software should provide several self-service features.
Agents should have the ability to submit time-off requests, view their schedules, and view their team’s and manager’s schedules. In the past, agents had to get permission from managers to swap shifts. As long as call volume coverage was met, this was generally never an issue. However, these types of requests do take up a manager’s time.
Shift swapping can now be done in real time as agents post their desired days off and the automated scheduling system does the rest. There is no need for managers to waste hours figuring out staffing needs or manually keep track of time off requests.
Benefits information such as paid time off or pay stubs should also be easily accessible. There is no reason for agents to have to wait to access this type of data from a human resources representative.
When an agent feels heard, they feel appreciated. Giving them autonomy through your workforce engagement system software allows agents to feel empowered. Their needs and wants are easily understood, which leads to much higher job satisfaction. When agents are content on the job, turnover rates can quickly decrease.
The leading workforce management software available will easily provide significant value for you and your agents. The dynamics of the working environment have changed over the last decade. It is important to make sure that your company provides attractive benefits for prospective agents.
Competitors are keen to pick up on hiring trends, especially in the contact center industry where turnover rates can be extremely high. You can stay on top of the best current hiring practices and job perks with efficient engagement software. This will be sure to keep your company on the leading edge in the contact center industry.
