Workforce Management

The use of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) providers by contact centers has skyrocketed, both due to a frenzied labor market and the explosion of digital channels. With an increasing number of organizations turning to...

Success: achieving and exceeding your goals, whether personal or in an organization, is its own reward. But it is great when you are recognized. Virgin Pulse provides blended digital and live person-based health and wellbeing...

The idiom “in demand” is defined as “greatly sought after, designed, or required by many people. Sometimes it is used with the modifier “high” before or in the middle of the phrase. I don’t...

Most of us understand the idiom “growing pains” as it relates to the stresses of actual physical human growth in ourselves and/or in our children. It is also a reference to experiencing challenging and...

Our top 5 posts for January are set to start us off on the right foot for 2023. Our Advisory Board offers their insights on trends we should expect to see for our centers...

Providing excellent customer service, support, sales, and billing relies on having the right numbers of the skilled contact center agents at the right times. But ensuring that critical task is accomplished successfully appears to...

Organizations are now well in their third year of operation in the remote or at-home/work-from-home (WFH) contact center environment. And they are working to devise sustainable workforce management (WFM) strategies. In today’s challenging job...

Not all roads to WFM Training follow the same path. Here is some information to help you understand the characteristics and the differences amongst them. I. VENDOR TRAINING “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” —Benjamin...

This month, our blog readers were interested in a variety of topics affecting their centers. Leslie discusses the skill that is of the utmost importance for our remote workers--writing well. The pandemic has brought...

Time flies! Here we are at Back to School time … prepping back packs, planning schedules, assigning duties, and gathering tools needed for success. Back to School is a good time to reflect...

One of the long-running conversations in the contact center industry has been whether to have staff (agents and supervisors) work-from-home (WFH). Proponents argue that WFH provides contact centers with access to a larger pool...

The earliest definition of contact center management that I know of came from Gordon MacPherson, founder of the Incoming Calls Management Institute (ICMI) in 1985. Gordon authored the Essentials Skills and Knowledge course, which...

Contact centers have long emphasized a strategy that is customer first, and for good reason. Delivering an outstanding customer experience is essential to driving brand loyalty and equity. Often neglected however, was the agent....

It is a good news/troubling news story for contact centers. How they and their supplier partners plan and respond will help determine how well the industry succeeds in the post-COVID-19 pandemic “new normal” era. On...

Everyone likes simplicity, especially in the world of customer service. The best contact center agents will simplify difficult situations for callers, and smart contact center managers will simplify training and workforce development for their...

Admittedly, I have not worked in a lot of different industries, but it is hard to imagine there are many that have a greater penchant for acronyms than the contact center space. When I...

Old and in the way, That’s what I heard them say. They used to heed the words he said, But that was yesterday. I had a birthday in June, and it suddenly struck me that I’ve lived for...

Artificial intelligence has become common in many households and workplaces. Popular AI personal assistants like Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana, Alexa and Bixby have played a big role in rapidly reshaping consumer attitudes about how...

Frontline focused! To make it in the future, contact center leadership needs to get down to the business of being “frontline-focused.” The competition for contact center resources has never been greater; this puts contemporary...

Our workforce management (WFM) landscape is changing at breakneck speed. Many organizations are now 100% work-from-home or have a workforce divided between brick-and-mortar and virtual agents (82% are WFH since July 2020—Gartner). This presents...