How to maximize your team's performance
Workforce management aims to maximize the performance levels and competency of the company. Some organizations choose to do this solely through workforce management software, while others prefer to integrate these tools into their existing HR processes.
But whichever approach you take to organizing your staff and their workflow, the fact remains that you’ll be relying to some extent on software to streamline this task. And in the fast-paced call center sector, that requires workforce management call center software suited to your environment.
Join us as we examine the features every call center needs to succeed and review the most popular workforce management call center software.
What exactly is workforce management? It’s a combination of processes that track worker performance and productivity, and strive to improve them.
These responsibilities usually fall under the direction of the human resources department. Experienced HR team leaders know that with dedicated people, enough resources, and especially, the right software, workforce management becomes a lot easier.
Workforce management in the call center industry is no different. With the right tools like workforce management call center software, staff become more productive, and customer service improves. All of this means a better reputation and more profits for the company in the long term.
Workforce management software is of particular value in the call center environment. Because so much rests on the success of each call, nothing can be left to chance. To make the biggest impact, five features stand out as top priorities for call center management software.
Previous performance and other metrics can be used to predict the number of staff needed for optimal results. Where extra staff means more money for labor, this is a number you want to reduce.
Employee scheduling can use these factors to determine your current staffing needs and to reshuffle staff as needed depending on their availability.
Software that allows some staff interaction on this issue, as with self-scheduling, helps employees feel more in control of their workday. It also eases the pressure on team leaders who have to manage large teams working in shifts.
With the right software, forecasting and scheduling features work hand in hand to schedule the right amount of calls for the right amount of staff, based on data from previous months.
Forecasting entails calculating future possibilities based on historical trends and other company-specific data. It is especially relevant to the issue of your staffing needs, but can also highlight other trends. This will depend on what your main areas of focus are.
This can help to guide HR and management’s decision-making when creating new work schedules or staffing policies.
In any business, time is money, and this is especially true of the call center. How long is each call taking? This is a metric that needs to be closely matched for both inbound and outbound call centers.
For inbound call centers offering customer service, consistently long call durations can mean that the agents aren’t effectively addressing customers’ concerns.
In outbound call centers, lengthy calls that don’t get the job done have to be eliminated, too. If call agents are taking too long to get to the point, potential customers will lose interest very quickly. This leads to dropped calls, frustrated employees, and low sales.
That’s why average talk time is one of the most essential outbound call center metrics you should be tracking. Tracking the time taken to complete each call allows you to focus more attention on addressing customers’ needs and closing deals, faster.
Of course, no workforce management software is truly useful without performance tracking thrown in the mix.
Performance can be tracked in two ways, and each has its benefit for the company.
In this way, performance tracking makes lasting and beneficial changes to your company’s success and profits.
Any business, call centers included, has to do a fair amount of reporting. For many companies, it’s a tedious and time-consuming necessity they wish they could do without. But with the right software features taking care of this need, it doesn’t have to be a chore.
Reporting on daily as well as monthly tasks is essential for team leaders to keep management informed of workplace productivity. By presenting crucial data in informative but simple visualizations, tables, and graphs, all metrics can be accessed and analyzed by stakeholders with greater ease.
If reporting is your team’s worst nightmare, or stakeholders find it difficult to interpret their data, ensure that your software has reporting tools to make their lives easier.
We’ve looked at the top software features that any call center needs to excel. But do today’s software platforms meet these needs effectively? And are there any platforms suitable for call centers that stand out from the rest?
With these important features for call center software in mind, let’s examine the best workforce management software for call centers in 2023.
Autoreach provides cloud-based call center software that offers all the top features you’ve come to expect from workforce management call center software.
Now you can queue calls, route calls based on preset profiles, send automated messages to customers, and so much more, all with one software package. Our power dialing is one of our top features, saving call agents time and thus saving you money.
But that’s not all. Agents don’t even have to log in to access customer data that will help them close a deal. Our headless CRM makes customer engagement a breeze, which boosts your new agents’ confidence while they still struggle with their fear of cold calling.
Our software can incorporate other tasks too. Team leaders can set up callbacks, schedule meetings, and engage workers and customers without even leaving their browsers - just use our Chrome extension.
That’s what makes Autoreach a fully comprehensive and versatile workforce management call center software platform. Your customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and productivity rates will all get a boost. And you only need the software platform to achieve it all.
Dialpad offers call recordings and real-time transcription, for quick and easy post-call analysis. Powered by the best in Ai technology, these transcriptions can be done for calls, as well as business meetings and video conferences.
This platform also allows you to reroute any incoming calls to more experienced agents, and integrate all your communications in its contact center platform. This makes the most of your staff’s individual skills and also enhances customer satisfaction.
Users are also most often impressed by their tech support, as this is where many workforce management call center software platforms fail.
Zoom Contact Center is a cost-effective, multi-functional contact center platform. Smaller outbound call centers and newcomers to the call center industry find it very versatile and user-friendly. It truly is a great all-rounder for a new business starting on a limited budget.
But it is just as relevant to larger organizations and more demanding work environments. Zoom can be used for a first-rate call experience but also doubles as a versatile inter-office communications platform. Which means you can do more, with less software.
The platform has some of the best call-routing tools, for maximizing the success of each call. Calls can be rerouted to other agents based on various criteria, which the user can tweak as they see fit. By matching the best call agent to the customer, the chances of a successful deal soar.
This Cloud-based omnichannel contact center software offers the best AI tools like call rerouting and agent coaching.
Talkdesk offers workforce engagement and workforce management features. Their Virtual Agent feature allows you to manage remote employees at lower cost, and deal with customer issues autonomously with a real-feel conversational experience.
Desktop and mobile tools for agents can be integrated into the software to make your call agent’s jobs that much easier.
The ability to easily migrate their phone system to the Cloud is the feature that clinches the deal for most newcomers to RingCentral.
Versatility is a big drawcard for many businesses looking for workforce management call center software. Users can enjoy RingCentral with compatible VoIP phones or online via the app. That makes this platform ideal for physical as well as virtual call centers and remote workers.
To stay on top of things in a large organization can be a challenge. Call recordings can be accessed later to resolve disputes, or check on employees’ customer interactions.
You can set this software to automatically record inbound calls for various inter-organization departments, and also inbound/outbound calls for individual call center agents.
Another Cloud-based workforce management call center software platform worth mentioning is 8x8. It offers to reroute calls based on agent skills and expertise, forecasting, and scheduling, as well as interaction analytics.
8x8 also allows you to monitor your agents’ compliance with their schedules through a customizable dashboard. This makes team leaders’ jobs easier and keeps staff focused on schedule adherence.
Alvaria offers the usual key features one needs from workforce management call center software. It offers scheduling, tracking, and forecasting to streamline your staffing needs and stay up-to-date with progress. It also offers more networking possibilities with contacts on other platforms.
But one of its most popular features is the self-service portal which enables staff to check their schedules, trade shifts with co-workers, and more. This can be useful in more ways than one. Employees who feel more in control of their work schedules are more likely to have higher job satisfaction.
By predicting spikes and lulls in call volume based on historical data, Calabrio can predict staffing needs. This helps with planning work schedules, to prevent over or under-staffing.
This forecasting using stored data can also help to identify which days’ or months’ success rates are significantly higher, so you can try to identify the causes and replicate them.
Gamification is another interesting feature here. It allows calling agents to earn badges based on their performance and adherence to their work schedules. This makes employee engagement easier, as virtual rewards like these are useful motivational tools.
When you get the right software, all your work tasks are streamlined, and your agents close more deals. So for workforce management call center software that dials up your outbound call performance, increases your employment potential, and maximizes your profits, look no further than Autoreach.
Start your free trial today, and start seeing results tomorrow.
Learn how AutoReach can take your outbound to the next level
