How Important is Workforce Optimization?

When Do Companies Need WFM?

When companies first launch their business, they are often too wrapped up in startup mode to foresee the needs of business at scale. At some point the inefficiencies of working without formal tools to effectively manage their workforce start to make themselves known and companies realize there are easier ways to work that can also transform the customer experience.

Workforce Management Case Study

In a recent webinar we shared a customer story to illustrate this point. The company we highlighted offers a restaurant management platform that supports point of sale (POS), digital ordering, reporting and employee management.

Workforce Management Software Benefits

Once the company decided to open their own contact center, they set out to choose a provider that had all the features and functionality they required. Most important, however, was uptime and the ability to easily scale as they added agents. Five9 met all their requirements and they were off and running and immediately saw improvements in average speed to answer, reducing it by nearly 60 seconds. 

Boosting Efficiency

The company then looked at their workforce management needs. When they first started, they had 12 agents and scheduling was done using spreadsheets. As the company grew rapidly, the spreadsheets were not sustainable and Five9 Workforce Management (WFM), powered by CSI, was implemented. Agent scheduling, which was taking 40+ hours a week, was cut to just 10 hours. 

Scheduling Accuracy

Another benefit of implementing the WFM solution was the ability to schedule agents by skill type and tier. Without having the correctly skilled agents in place, first call resolution (FCR) is hard to do. Once they had WFM in place they saw FCR improve as much as 10 percent. These are just a couple of the benefits they realized right out of the gate. 

Motivated & Empowered Employees

The customer’s plan is to roll WFM out to agents to allow them to change their own schedules, request PTO and do shift bidding. Agents will also be able to see their breaks, lunch schedule and personal development time. This will empower the agents to own their schedules. 

Next step is to roll out Five9 Quality Management powered by CSI.

To learn more about the value of Workforce Optimization, WFM and QM, from Donna Fluss, President of DMG Consulting and Five9’s approach to WFO please watch the full webinar here. To learn more about our WFO solutions, click here.