Tips for better Real Time Management in a contact center

“Why did we fail service level when we planned for the right staff ?”

Sounds familiar? I’m sure a lot of Workforce Management professionals working in contact centers have come across this question. So what went wrong when we made the best plan? The answer to this question could be with execution.

In a contact center there are several teams involved who work together everyday to ensure program objectives are met. Workforce management team is one of them and plays a vital role in ensuring the staff plan is adhered to. Real Time Management is an important function of Workforce Management which ensures current performance is monitored against the plan and actions are taken to mitigate deviations. This task is commonly performed by a Real Time Analyst (There are different titles related to the same role in various organizations).

Now how do we ensure that the Real Time Analyst is able to “save” the day. Here are some tips to help you out.

• Create what if scenarios: As with any good plan, deviations are possible. It is important to prepare ahead of time for these deviations and create documented actions plans which will act as guide when the deviations occur. It is also important to think about various levels of severity and the change required in action plans to meet different severity levels.
• Review staffing ahead of time: A good practice is to know the predicted staffing gaps during the day, so that plans can be made to fill the gaps ahead of time instead of reacting during the staffing gap. There are some times when the trend for the day goes against the plan. In those situations efforts should be made to re simulate the staffing for the remaining day as per the trend. Actions can be then taken according to the updated staffing predictions.
• Escalate to the right people: A lot of time and effort of the Real Time Analysts may not necessarily convert to results as the communication is limited to only front line management. Senior management is often kept out of the loop. It is important to create tier based escalation plan so that issues can reach the right levels when there is no action by the front-line staff. Though this is the most basic step, it is often missed in times of crisis.

These are some very basic tips, I am sure there are many advanced best practices which can be shared by various experts in the contact center industry. Please feel free to share your views and experiences.

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