TMCnews Featured Article

GMT Offers Call Center Workforce Management Insight Summary

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Call center leaders rarely have time to investigate the latest trends in call center workforce management, even if the information available can make their everyday tasks more efficient. As a result, GMT has identified vendor-neutral industry news and trends that can benefit contact center executives.

GMT releases this information on a quarterly basis to help customers and industry executives to easily grasp key ideas, concepts and information that are reshaping the contact center industry, and call center workforce management technology as a whole. By understanding the challenges and opportunities that exist, these executives are better equipped to make profit-generating decisions within dynamic environments. 

The list issued this quarter focuses on the top six workforce management trends to watch. The first gathers data from Accenture’s (News - Alert) Banking Technology Vision white paper that predicts the increased use of collaboration and community tools will provide better connectivity between agents and customers, as well as across the workforce. These tools include social networks, desktop sharing, telepresence, video conference and more. 

ContactBabel’s (News - Alert) Customer 2.0: Customer Experience and Profitability in the New Economy white paper suggests that Web collaboration and text chat will become more mainstream. The opportunity to ask that quick question in real-time has the potential to dramatically improve conversion rates for millions of online carts. 

A North American customer survey conducted by Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) took a closer look at overall call center workforce management as it relates to social media. The company found that 30 percent of participants support social media customer activity, as well as interactions on external media sites, including Twitter and Facebook (News - Alert). Another 29 percent indicate they monitor and extract intelligence from this activity. 

The Society of New Communications Research (SNCR) conducted a survey recently and found that 59 percent of respondents use social media on a regular basis to vent about their customer care frustrations. Call center leaders can use call center workforce management tools to ensure agents are effectively managing social media tools to weed out negative comments and deliver a satisfactory resolution to the customer’s problem. 

Gartner’s (News - Alert) Magic Quadrant for Contact Centers, suggests that through 2013, one of the major initiatives in the call center workforce management space that will dominate customer service strategies will be the application of business rules and knowledge in real-time, equipping the company with the information and means to turn that knowledge into actionable data. 

The call center industry is nothing short of dynamic and exciting, and demanding leaders must stay on top of all call center workforce management initiatives to maintain their competitive edge.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jamie Epstein