What are the challenges of Workforce Management in companies?
Understand what it is, the role of WFM in companies, and the main challenges of Workforce Management in customer service operations.
Over the years, companies experience different challenges such as increasing revenues, growing operations, expanding teams, etc. This creates demands for management, especially in relation to the team's professionals.
For this reason, companies invest in exceeding Workforce Management challenges to consolidate good management, especially in relation to employees, with turnover, training and process improvement.
This type of system helps managers organize and monitor the work of support employees, automating tasks and generating data to assist in the necessary improvements.
So, in addition to investing in ways to improve the customer experience, a WFM software it is also a useful tool that can be added to improve the internal performance of employees.
You already know the topic, but you don't know exactly what Workforce Management is, what is its role in the customer service of companies and the main challenges of its implementation?
Read on, as we respond to each of these topics throughout this article. Have a good read!
What is Workforce Management?
The term Workforce Management (WFM) is translated as workforce management and is a computer system specialized in managing all points related to the performance of teams in companies.
The objective is to be able to offer the best experience, maintaining an affordable infrastructure and with a team of the necessary size, according to the operations.
To be able to organize this scenario, managers use the following information to do Workforce Management:
- demand for service;
- competencies required for each work shift;
- seasonality of calls;
- turnover index (employee turnover);
- performance indicators by employee.
This information helps managers to have a broad view of the work that must be done and, consequently, of how to scale and optimize the operators' work.
Overcoming Workforce Management challenges also helps to make more assertive projections in relation to goals, avoiding team overload and dissatisfaction with tiring work dynamics and with unattainable objectives.
What is the role of WFM in the operation?
Customer service is a complex sector and that it needs to be very well managed, so the WFM plays an important role in this operation.
Considering the variety of demands that clients generate, the volume of service received and how this volume varies throughout the month, it is necessary Structuring the team so that it works as efficiently as possible.
This will avoid overwork, excessive overtime that increases monthly costs, imbalance in the company's organizational climate, etc.
A functional and well-aligned team can even improve conversion rates in some sectors, such as e-commerce. Receiving a quick response to a question about a product, for example, can be a decisive factor in ensuring the purchase.
A company's processes are intertwined and the success of one can lead to another, or it drives the company forward.
What are the challenges of Workforce Management?
Now that you know what WFM is and the role of WFM in a company, it is important to consider that there are Workforce Management challenges that influence the results that can be obtained.
Then, the process will require a lot of effort from managers to align the team with the WFM software. Even though it is a challenging job, overcoming each point along the journey brings advantageous results.
Here are the main Workforce Management challenges that should pay special attention to:
Adequately predict ticket volume
Predict the volume of tickets it is one of the challenges of Workforce Management, mainly because it is a data that varies a lot. It is from the volume that it is possible to measure the number of staff attendants, the workload and scale of each professional.
Even if the WFM software identifies the peaks in calls throughout the day, this does not mean that this will be the case every day, as something can cause an exponential increase one week and the next the operations will return to a normal level.
Then, the irregular volume of calls will require more time and effort from managers to reach assertive conclusions. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that certain processes will take longer to align and the team needs to be aware and receive support from managers along the way.
Control service costs
Another Workforce Management challenge is the control of service costs. The seasonality of calls is one of the factors that influence expense management.
During peak periods, the job will require adjustments to the team so that the call demand is met, without affecting the quality and agility of the customer experience.
This requires managers' attention to anticipate these phases and reinforce the team in advance, as well as to call on other departments such as HR for hiring and finance for cost adjustments.
In other words, working with Workforce Management is unlikely to be a straight line, but it is possible to manage volume and cost changes and plan so that the company maintains the consistency of the work.
Team engagement
Every new process can generate some kind of strangeness and even resistance to change. This is also one of the challenges of Workforce Management.
Monitoring individual productivity, compliance with scales and SLA, service time, and other data must be treated as a beneficial measure that will provide information to improve the company's bonus policy.
Creating a WFM software implementation schedule, including training, feedback, and adjustments, also helps to engage the team with the new system.
Constantly invest in your team
A satisfied and motivated service team is the result of good management and companies need to be aware of quality of the structure offered and of the training processes that align employees with processes.
A Cloud Humans It is the ideal partner to advise your business when managing the workforce and dealing with variations in the sector, strengthening team skills and offering humanized, fast and assertive service.
Talk to our experts who are available to present our solution and show how much it can help you achieve your business objectives.