Your Quick Guide to Selecting the Right Workforce Management Software

Contact Centers are measured along several dimensions. At the company level, KPIs such as customer satisfaction, Net Promoter Score, and upselling or cross-selling are typical. At the operational level, metrics such as average time in queue, cost per call, and first call resolution rate are often front and center. And at the agent level, handle time, adherence, and idle time are frequently evaluated. All of these KPIs are measured to varying degrees of effectiveness, depending largely on whether the contact center has a workforce management solution in place — and how good the workforce management solution actually is. 

Regardless of the KPIs your contact center tracks, workforce management software brings many proven benefits. When deciding your contact center is ready for the automation, accelerated decision-making, and streamlined operations that WFM affords, there are a number of steps to take in selecting the right solution for your organization.

Related Article: What is Workforce Management and When Should Your Contact Center Implement It?

Contact Center Objectives for WFM

First and foremost, consider your contact center’s objectives relative to a workforce management software deployment. The three most common objectives are:

• Optimizing the contact center workforce
• Reducing operational costs
• Tracking agent performance

It’s likely that your contact center has objectives beyond these, so it’s important to lay them out for all stakeholders to evaluate and prioritize. Depending on budget, timelines, and other considerations, your contact center may need to make decisions as to what’s most important to do first. 

Designed to optimize your contact center workforce with the tools that make the most impact fastest, Playvox Workforce Management includes forecasting, scheduling and monitoring along with intraday management reports workforce adjustments and optimization on-the-fly.

Related Article: WFM ROI — Why You Need Workforce Management Software Now

Contact Center Requirements for WFM

Once your objectives are clear and agreed upon, it’s time to dig into your contact center’s requirements. This may ultimately be a long list of needs your business has along with the feature sets your contact center needs to optimize the agent experience. A comprehensive set of requirements is your best guide for a solution that satisfies as many different needs as possible, even if they appear to be competitive with each other on the surface. 

It’s best to think about this list in terms of who is using the WFM solution as well as who is going to benefit from it, both internally — your agents, and externally — your customers. With those groups in mind, lay out your requirements in these sections. 

• Deployment Model
• Key Features
• Channels Supported
• Analytics (Reports and Dashboards)
• Mobile Access
• Security
• Integrations
• Administrative Controls
• Support 

Key Features of WFM

Among the features you will likely want to have in your WFM solution are multi-channel support and a cloud-native deployment. Both help offset costs right from the start and both help ensure your contact center is up and running on the software as efficiently and effectively as possible. 

An often overlooked feature is usability. The contact center is fundamentally human work. People use the software to help other people get answers, solve problems and address issues. It must be, at a minimum, easy to use. Ideally, the product will gamify certain aspects of workforce optimization. When you get demonstrations of each solution, don’t hesitate to press the vendor to show you everything the product can do. And ask what’s on the product roadmap, so you can be sure the solution will be aligned with your needs over the long term. 

It’s important to consider other features such as multi-language support, especially if you do business in multiple regions. English and Spanish are the most frequently requested languages, both of which Playvox Workforce Management supports. 

Questions to Ask Your WFM Vendor

If you are currently evaluating workforce management solutions, you can use this list of questions to ask vendors so you have a way to compare options across a range of criteria.

1. What’s your solution’s deployment model? 
2. On average, how long does your solution take to implement?
3. Does your solution have a mobile component?
4. Does your solution support multiple languages?
5. Tell me about your solution’s security and permissions.
6. What is your company’s CSAT score?
7. How do agents like using your solution?
8. How much training is required to get agents up and running on your solution?
9. Can I talk to a few of your current customers who have a similar contact center to ours?
10. What kind of report and dashboard capabilities come with your solution?
11. What systems does your solution integrate with? 
12. How long does it take to implement an integration? 
13. Are there additional costs associated with integration? 
14. Are professional services required for integration?
15. What are the top priorities on your solution roadmap?

Getting Started

Another word to the wise: Read actual user reviews of solutions. You can get the unvarnished truth about what various vendors’ customers think of the solution they’ve bought, implemented and used. Start with user reviews of Playvox on SoftwareAdvice and G2. Given how valuable these perspectives can be, it’s a good idea to go even deeper and have a look at sites like TrustRadius and Capterra as well.

To help you choose the right workforce management software for your contact center, we share in this on-demand Call Centre Helper webinar key insights for choosing the optimal solution, optimizing your customer experience and lowering your operating costs.

If you’re ready to jump in, you can request a demo of Playvox Workforce Management. It’s the all-in-one agent optimization suite, yours to use for free for up to 15 days.