The Path to Workforce Excellence: Leveraging WFM for Optimal Efficiency

Companies that hire workforce management (WFM) departments follow a similar trajectory from an effort to optimization point of view. At the start of the journey, there are quick wins that allow the WFM department to drive large optimization payouts. Here are a few examples:

1. Measuring baseline productivity.
2. Building out a capacity plan based on the default productivity scenario.
3. Making changes in the hiring plan and BPO staffing levels to achieve objectives based on the default productivity scenario.
4. Implementing shift changes with business constraints in mind to roughly align demand and supply distribution.
5. Educating the operational team on WFM key performance indicators such as occupancy, AHT (Average Handle Time), shrinkage, and attrition rate to drive operational changes.

Especially in a scenario where there is a surplus in capacity, WFM can deliver significant improvements in the labor expense ratio, lower operating expenses, and drive profitability.

The next level is where a moderate amount of effort is required to drive optimization payouts. The payout to effort won't be as high as the initial workforce management initiatives, but it's still worth the effort.

1. Improve Demand and Capacity Curve Alignment: In most traditional contact centers, the capacity curve changes slower than the demand curve. Traditional contact centers employ workers on fixed hours. Therefore, the supply curve's rate of change is based on natural attrition rates and hiring limitations. The demand curve's rate of change is based on customer behavior. In most cases, the demand curve's rate of changes more rapidly than the supply curve

• Macro: Change hiring practices, weekly working hour requirements, BPO staffing processes.
• Micro: Offering dynamic shifts.

2. Labor Rate Arbitrage: Change the mix of staffing levels by moving down the cost curve of trading in high labor rate locations with low labor rate locations. Remember that you can only meet two of the three needs: price, quality, speed.
3. Optimize WFM practices: This could mean a lot of things, but the focus should be on continually improving the capabilities of the WFM pillars: forecasting, planning, scheduling, and real-time adherence capabilities. As an example, if you drive better forecasting capabilities, it will allow the business to better match the demand and capacity curve. The savings are largely driven by reducing the delta between the demand and capacity curve.

If the WFM department can achieve these two levels, then it would have optimized the workforce to a large extent in the contact center. These steps don’t need to occur linearly; they can be completed in parallel. Furthermore, the steps listed are not an exhaustive list. There are many more initiatives that can be added that will drive further operational improvement. Rather than focusing on what and how many optimization steps need to be completed, a WFM team should focus on its main objective, which is to deliver operational efficiency while striving to support the contact center in delivering a top-notch customer experience.