Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

February 15, 2008

InVision Highlights Efficiency Potential of Optimized Multi-Activity Scheduling for Contact Centers

By Anuradha Shukla

InVision Software highlighted at a recent industry event the efficiency potential of optimized multi-activity scheduling. According to a recent study, the majority of contact centers use workforce management solutions simply to measure adherence to schedules, and to run “what-if” scenarios.
 
In contrast, only 29 percent of contact centers are currently using such solutions to forecast and schedule multimedia work, such as answering emails and engaging in text chat. InVision explains that neglecting to do so means that multimedia channels are left to look after themselves, which creates a disappointing customer experience and poor service levels.
 
Peter Bollenbeck, CEO of InVision Software Group said in a statement that a large number of companies do not face the consequences of poor service and annoyed customers. This directly affects contact centers which are not giving their agents sufficient time to deal with non-telephony work. As a result of this, emails are being ignored or answered too late, with these disappointed customers either ringing the contact center with their request or going elsewhere entirely with their business.
 
Bollenbeck noted that contact centers should be forecasting their multimedia workload and scheduling agent time accordingly, otherwise they might as well not bother offering an alternate channel to traditional telephony. He added that with the company’s solution, InVision Enterprise WFM, contact centers gain an easy-to-use scheduling tool for multi-skill, multimedia environments.
 
InVision Software points out that the conventional planning tools usually work with complex and time-consuming simulation ignoring the real requirements. InVision Enterprise WFM takes into account the skill-sets of individual employees and the pooling efficiencies offered by multi-skills to enable truly demand-oriented planning.
 
In addition, the InVision solution takes into account peaks and troughs in inbound 'abandoning' contacts such as telephone calls and optimally schedule blocks of time for agents to be devoted to non-abandoning contacts such as email or back office work. This unique solution is able to achieve all of this with a fraction of the setup time and a fraction of the run-time of other workforce management systems.
 
InVision Software is a supplier of enterprise-wide workforce management (WFM) solutions which enable companies to optimize their staff planning and scheduling processes.
 
Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers whitepapers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is The New New Thing: “Hybrid” Deployments for Speech, brought to you by Voxify.
 
Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anuradha’s article, please visit her columnist page.
 


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