As you’ve probably seen, the contact center industry continues to change at an increasing pace.  Technology advances in both customer service and communication changes how we have to think about how we work in the contact center today.  Customers continue to demand superior customer service experiences and can quickly switch to your competitors if they don’t get it. Your employees have options to change jobs as well if they don’t like working at your company, or aren’t happy with how they are treated. Amongst others, these external and internal factors have an impact on contact center operations and challenge CC professionals to stay up-to-date and flexibly respond to changes and trends in the industry.

If you’re in Workforce Management (WFM) or Forecasting long enough, you’ll hear just about everything that doesn’t work when it comes to planning in the contact center. Often bad information gets passed down from analyst to analyst, or people build forecasting models that they love, but aren’t able to be flexible in adjusting the methodology as they grow in the craft, or as the business changes. There are some sciences that apply to any contact center forecast. 

What is your contact center service level goal?  Odds are, some or all of the groups are at either 80/20, 70/30 or some combination of those.  They are extremely common.  Do you use average speed of answer (ASA)?  If so, is it 20 seconds or 30 seconds?  Those are by far the most utilized ASAs.  But what do these actually mean and how do you know if you have the right measure?  

First of all, why does Contact Center Forecast Accuracy matter?  In my experience, the most important outcome from a forecast is the headcount or FTE (Full Time Equivalents) that you need.  Every other sub-forecast (contacts, handle time, shrinkage) are all critical to contributing to the headcount forecast.  

"No, not pizza again!" said a disgruntled Agent. They hated having the same cliched "motivational" rewards in their contact center. If you still rely on donuts, pizza and movie tickets as the primary perks in your contact center, you need to think again...