WFM – Workforce Management – also known as WFA – Workforce Automation - conjures up some mixed views that I think speaks to fundamental challenges facing today’s contact centers. Let’s start with the basic premise that WFM is desirable among those who need to keep the line moving, namely contact center managers and supervisors. When the tasks performed by agents are viewed as constant flows within a process, WFM makes a lot of sense. Not only is this a measurable approach for optimizing performance, labor is by far the largest cost component in the contact center, often 70% or more. As such, there is substantial financial upside in getting the most out of your agents.

In principal – and often in practice – WFM drives these results. Once workflows can be mapped out, staffing and scheduling is planned accordingly. Contact centers cannot afford an ongoing imbalance either way – too many or too few agents – both outcomes are equally undesirable – cost overruns or unhappy customers (and inevitably unhappy agents).

Aside from forecasting the right level of supply to meet anticipated demand in terms of headcount, it is equally important for WFM to plan for the right skill set. By drawing from ACD records, CRM databases and performance-based analytics, intelligence can be built over time to do this. These sources can provide valuable indicators as to which types of customers will be calling at certain times, or what types of callflows to expect around specific marketing campaigns or seasonal demands.

So far so good, but you know there’s a rub. In a conventional, telecom-centric environment, these processes are pretty straightforward. Agents are primarily working over the phones, and may be adding some email or messaging along the way. Callflows are mostly linear in fashion, agents handle calls the same way, and supervisors generally know what to expect.

That equation has changed considerably as we shift to a Web-centric world, where multimedia is the norm and agents must manage multi-channel sessions with customers. This landscape is far from static, and as new tools are added to the agent’s arsenal, it is not clear if today’s WFM offerings can incorporate them into their DNA. As agents take on new modes, the underlying skill set becomes more demanding, adding more complexity to the scheduling task.

In this world, forecasting must account for the types of modes (and often more than one during a session) that customers will be using, and from there, which agents have the right skills to match. Multimedia competency is difficult to gauge, and takes longer to develop than basic phone skills. If WFM offerings cannot speak to that, contact centers will need to rely on purpose-built solutions for multimedia, and that could lead to silos – a path nobody really wants to take.

Add to that the speed with which things happen in this new world. With so many real-time communications tools available to both customers and agents, the pace is faster now in contact centers. This, in fact, is true on two levels. First, customers can respond more quickly to marketing initiatives, which puts new pressure on inbound traffic. Second, expectations for a rapid response are much higher, meaning that agents must be ready to handle bursts of activity quickly – otherwise, customers will have a negative experience that offsets any potential benefit from their inquiry.

In both cases, there is an acute need now for contact centers to respond in near real-time to changing conditions. WFM tools may be very adept at forecasting the impact of surges or changes in call flows, but if they are not tightly integrated with internal systems, the benefit may be lost. In other words, if WFM forecasts show what the optimal mix of agents needs to be one hour from now, but if supervisors cannot access the data or respond for another two hours, the tool will be counter-productive.  As such, WFM offerings need to integrate more closely with reporting and analytics tools, and enable the contact center to respond more proactively to these rapidly changing conditions.

On one level, the core role of a contact center agent hasn’t changed, but the tools for doing the job have become more complex. Of course, this cuts both ways, and that’s the challenge for WFM. On the plus side, multi-channel allows agents to communicate with the most effective modes for the situation, and can take successful problem resolution to levels the phone could never get to. Conversely, the demands are much weightier now for both agents and supervisors. Agents need a richer skill set, and the task of measuring performance is more daunting for supervisors.

If you’re following closely here, you may be wondering why social media hasn’t been mentioned yet. I’ve been trying to frame my analysis to this point without it, as I believe there is enough to worry about as is. Social media is too new and marginal to be driving WFM, but I have no doubt it will become a primary driver, probably faster than the vendors are ready for. Social media presents its own set of challenges for the contact center that layer on top of everything else I’ve been talking about here. I won’t speak to that now, though, as social media was the focus of several recent posts in my Exony column. Regardless, social media is placing new demands on everyone in the food chain, and if ignored, could quickly disrupt even the best WFM workflow forecast.

As such, there is a lot at stake, and my research leads me to a clear conclusion. WFM is very much a two-way street, and when I hear that many contact centers do not feel they are getting a good ROI, it sounds like the traffic is mostly going in one direction. By that I mean the best forecasting will fall flat if there’s no agent buy-in. WFM processes are only effective if agents adhere to the plan, and supervisors ultimately only have so much influence on performance. Forecasts that result in a mismatch of skills will put undue pressure on agents, and if they’re treated merely as cogs in the machine, you don’t need me to tell you what happens to agent morale and retention.

I should add that even where there is agent buy-in, the organization as a whole must be flexible enough to adapt to the forecasts produced by WFM. For example, the forecast may indicate that 20% more agents will be needed during the evening shift before an upcoming long weekend. However, it turns out that many of your agents are not available then, as it aligns with a religious holiday that happens to be common among them. Another scenario would be a forecast showing that you really need agents on the day shift to work another two hours, but since many of them have children in day care, they cannot stay longer. These examples speak to the need for companies to have sufficient flexibility that they can respond to modifications in WFM forecasts – otherwise, the tools will have limited utility.

I don’t have the prescription to make WFM perfect, but contact centers need these tools, especially as remote workers and offshoring become bigger pieces of the puzzle. The less direct contact supervisors have with agents, the harder their job becomes, and more they need to rely on forecasts that reflect all the factors impacting the operation. Multi-channel and social media need to be a bigger part of WFM, and more than ever, performance depends on the agent’s skill set. If WFM is going to address all these elements, there’s a need – and an opportunity here – for the vendors to integrate agent skills around multimedia as much as the performance metrics of the supervisors into their forecasts. The need is evident to me, and if the established WFM vendors don’t, others inevitably will.