Workforce management solutions help call centers manage their human resources more effectively, allowing them to cut costs and perform better.

These days, most contact centers employ a large number of workers. This allows them to deploy multichannel services and respond quickly to customers’ queries. Managing a big team, however, can be difficult without the help of process automation tools.

An important piece of software every company must have is the workforce management tool, which automates staffing-related processes such as performance monitoring, attendance tracking, training and development, and others. Here are the five benefits you can gain from using one.

1.     Predict staffing requirements.

In order to enhance the customer experience, call centers must be able to cope with the massive volume of requests they receive. This, however, isn’t possible if you’re understaffed.

Given this scenario, your first impulse might be to hire plenty of agents. This, however, would entail extra costs, so the best solution is to use a workforce planning tool to help you predict when call surges are likely to occur. Afterwards, you’ll be able to organize agents’ schedules so that more of them would be available when customers are likely to contact you.

2.     Promote staff effectiveness.

To measure effectiveness, contact centers set service level objectives. But your organization won’t be fully productive if your employees are not following protocols such as those concerning break times and attendance.

A workforce management software lets you track people’s performance in real time. This way, you can continuously evaluate your performance and immediately implement the necessary changes to improve efficiency.

3.     Save on operation costs.

By helping you match supply and demand, you can be sure that your staffing is tailored according to the busiest and slowest times in your call center. Aside from allowing you to attend to all customers’ concerns, this would let you manage your human resources and facilities better. For instance, scheduling your agents during downtimes would only lead to increased operation costs.

4.     Keep track of remote workers.

Today’s call center agents can operate from almost anywhere. Some customer support providers build tech infrastructures to allow employees to work remotely. Typically, this framework would consist of cloud-based programs accessible and deployable via the Internet. This lets providers increase their overall productivity and also gives agents a lot of flexibility.

The downside is that such a setup can be difficult to manage. How can managers ensure that their agents are being fully productive and that their protocols are being followed? How can they maximize their spending on cloud technologies?

Through workforce management solutions, managers can keep track of all agents, regardless of whether they’re working in-house or not. This way, you can easily monitor and evaluate their performance.

5.     Standardize workforce planning.

Processes relating to human resources generally require a lot of work. There are several aspects involved such as budgeting, forecasting the number of employees needed, and workforce scheduling. All these could affect a contact center’s productivity and efficiency, so you need to weigh all staffing decisions carefully.

A workforce management software provides you a centralized place for overseeing these processes. It would also give you access to all operation- and people-related information, letting you make holistic decisions that would improve the company’s performance.