Workforce Optimisation drives business performance

The workforce is an organisation’s greatest asset but it is customer satisfaction and loyalty that keeps the business ticking over. A Workforce Optimisation (WFO) strategy helps drive both. It’s what will keep customers coming back – and the competition at bay.

WFO provides the link between the people, databases, processes, and systems used to deliver customer service. It enables the much needed collection of data, as well as timeous access to it, and the exchange of relevant information between the company’s executives, department heads and employees.

The benefits of implementing workforce optimisation (WFO) in a contact centre are proven and, more and more, it plays a pivotal role in operating customer centric organisations. But to get the maximum value from these strategies, organisations need to introduce change, addressing barriers to effective implementation head-on.

WFO comprises of:

• quality assurance, which makes use of recordings and evaluations of contact centre agents’ interactions with customers across multimedia touch points to assess and monitor the quality of their service;
• forecasting and scheduling, which ensures optimum staffing to drive efficiency and meet service levels;
• reporting to identify staff strengths and areas for improvement; and
• training, which closes the loop, delivering the eLearning, policy and protocol updates necessary to improve staff performance and outputs.

These four processes are united through WFO, providing insight into organisational performance and allowing the organisation to continually improve and become a more customer-focussed organisation that uses the technology it has invested in for this purpose.

WFO offers the ideal means to support the mind-shift required to operate a customer centric organisation. In this paradigm, a company’s goals, contact centre targets and customer objectives are aligned and linked. This enables the transition from a single-minded focus on profitability and short term revenues to also address real customer needs – a vital element in the long term success of any business.

A successful WFO implementation will provide the means to balance productivity with quality, increasing contact centre-driven revenue and standardising service across touch points and complex transactions. But WFO is not something that can be realised overnight as it requires a shift in behaviour.

Implementation typically begins in a branch, a geography or a service area; and it may or may not be done using a modular approach – replacing older systems. Whatever the rollout strategy, the challenge is to ensure the benefits translate into measureable cost savings, reduced risk, performance and service quality improvements, and staffing efficiencies. Benefits increase with a comprehensive WFO rollout, but the business needs to see the advantages and positive impacts such a strategy shift in order to justify funding and supporting such an initiative.

A well-implemented WFO solution will help ensure that the contact centre is aligned with the rest of the company, and is able to maximise efficiency and effectiveness while facilitating proactive collaboration with the rest of the organisation.

This is more than just another ideal to strive for.  It will become the imperative that will distinguish successful from unsuccessful organisations.

Paul Fick, Jasco Enterprise Communication Divisional MD