Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Customer Relationship Metrics Now Gathering Data for its Upcoming Workforce Management Practices Study

January 21, 2008

Contact center industry research firm Customer Relationship Metrics is reportedly gathering data for its upcoming Workforce Management Practices Study, endorsed by the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP). The study is being sponsored by WFM solutions provider InVision Software, along with WFM solutions providers Verint Systems and Calabrio Software.



President, Customer Relationship Metrics, and famed consumer scientist Dr. Jodie Monger is leading the research. Monger is the inventor of real-time surveying for contact centers and is the founding associate director of Purdue University's Center for Customer-Driven Quality.

This will be the second Workforce Management Practices Study from Customer Relationship Metrics. Study participants will answer questions related to numerous topics, including performance metrics, WFM resources utilized and investments, processes, tools utilized and satisfaction with the solutions.

The previous study found that while the penetration of licensed WFM software solutions used for scheduling contact center staff is quite high (88 percent), 52 percent of contact centers do not use WFM software to support performance reporting and 25 percent do not use it to support forecasting. The previous study also found that most respondents place a much greater emphasis on accessibility metrics (service level, average speed of answer, percentage of calls abandoned) than on efficiency (agent occupancy, agent utilization) and workforce management effectiveness (agent adherence, forecast accuracy, schedule accuracy) metrics. Using the performance metrics provided, the research team was not able to create an effective balanced scorecard for 34 percent of the respondents.

In addition, the previous study found 62 percent of respondents post new schedules at least every month, (39 percent weekly, 7 percent daily), the remaining 38 percent post new schedules as needed. It also revealed that there is a lot of room for improvement in both the workforce management process (with 37 percent not satisfied) and workforce management software (with 41 percent not satisfied).

Results of the study no doubt have high value for the software vendors working in the WFM space, as it gives them feedback from users and organizations about the advantages and disadvantages of the WFM solutions currently on the market, as well as the various WFM practices in place. They can use this data to help them make good decisions about what features and functionality to build into future releases of their products.

Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Sterling, Va., Customer Relationship Metrics specializes in conducting research for the contact center industry.

For more information about the study, call Jim Rembach at (336) 288-8226. For more information about Customer Relationship Metrics, visit www.metrics.net.

For more information about the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) visit www.swpp.org.

For more information about InVision visit www.invisionwfm.com.

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Patrick Barnard is Assignment Editor for ContactCenterSolutions and Associate Editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.

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