WIXLIB

Cloud Contact CenterMaking WorkforceOptimization Sizzle toDeliver BetterCustomer Experiencespowered by CXone

Contents03Executive Summary04Four Ways That WorkforceOptimization Drives Business Value05Case Study06 Workforce Optimization: The WayForward072The Transformational Impact ofGamification on Agent Performance

Executive SummaryIncreasingly, it’s not the products or servicesthat differentiate a company to its customers,but the quality and consistency of thecustomer experiences it delivers. This helpsexplain why 89% of companies expect tocompete primarily on the basis of customerexperience in 2016, according to Gartner. Inorder to provide customers with consistentservice experiences across each of thechannels they use, it’s critical for contactcenter supervisors to be able to captureand understand customer interactionsand have the ability to route customers toagents with specific skills that are best suitedto assist with customers’ individual needs.Delivering consistent service experiencesis also a prerequisite for executing onbusiness objectives. Sixty-six percent ofcustomers switch companies due to poorservice, according to Accenture. By contrast,companies that deliver consistent customerexperiences beat other organizations in keyareas of business performance.For instance, a 2015 study conducted byWatermark Consulting found that customerexperience leaders outperformed thebroader market in stock performance from2007 to 2014. The cumulative returns forcustomer experience leaders in the studyrose 107.5% while the S&P 500 Index gained72.3%. Meanwhile, the stock performance forcustomer experience laggards over this timewas just 27.6%.The use of sophisticated technologies tobetter understand and respond to customerneeds and behaviors can help drive customersatisfaction and business performance.State-of-the-art workforce optimization (WFO)software that’s integrated with an automatedcall distribution (ACD) system and blendedwith speech analytics can allow contactcenter leaders to extract critical informationfrom customer interactions and be usedto optimize forecasting and scheduling,improve omnichannel interaction routing,identify coaching opportunities with agentsto improve individual and team performance,and to measure quality in order to identifyexecution issues and opportunities forimprovement.Ultimately, these operational improvementscan allow companies to deliver moreintelligent and better customer serviceexperiences. WFO tools provide agents theability to grasp the full course of a customer’sinteractions and history with the company,enabling agents to deliver personalized andrelevant support in the moment. Meanwhile,quality management tools enable bothcontact center supervisors and agents toassess and act on agent performance inorder to continuously improve the actionsthat agents take to deliver consistentcustomer experiences.“With speech analytics and other advancedWFO tools, contact centers are equipped todeliver superior results with less effort,” saysChris Bauserman, VP Segment & ProductMarketing. In the pages that follow, we’lldescribe in detail how cutting-edge workforceoptimization tools and techniques areenabling companies to deliver exceptionalcustomer experiences and strengthenbusiness performance.Making Workforce Optimization Sizzle toDeliver Better Customer Experiences3

Four Ways That Workforce OptimizationDrives Business ValueAgents and other customer-facing employees are pivotal in helping acompany to develop and sustain strong relationships with its customers.Workforce optimization tools and techniques are integral in enablingcompanies to build and sustain strong customer relationships. Here arefour ways in which the use of workforce optimization tools can enablecompanies to maximize their most important assets – their employees –and deliver rich customer experiences that foster business growth.Improve the customerexperienceWorld-class forecasting and scheduling technologies which utilizepatented algorithms are designed to optimize workforce efficiency,thus ensuring that customer calls are being answered and customerwait times are reduced. In addition, quality scores that are drawn fromWFO tools which are integrated with an ACD can be used to stackrank employees and be used for intelligent call routing. Therefore,when a customer connects with the contact center, the customer canbe routed to the right agent with the right skills to handle a specifictype of query (such as a billing or account question) based on firstcontact resolution (FCR) scores and other criteria. Meanwhile, qualitymanagement and speech analytics tools offered in a WFO suite canhelp contact center supervisors gain a complete understanding ofthe experiences that customers are receiving and identify coachingopportunities and other areas for improvement. Speech analyticscan unearth hidden insights regarding customer complaints andcomments that can be quickly identified and acted upon. Gainingaccess to such insights is critical since most businesses hear fromjust 4% of dissatisfied customers while the other 96% remain silent,according to Understanding Customers by Ruby Newell-Legner.Deliver better resultswith less effortAchieving improved results doesn’t mean that contact center staffhas to work harder. Thanks to sophisticated WFO tools, contact centerteams can instead work smarter. As customer behaviors continueto change, contact center teams require tools that can adapt tochanging requirements and deliver the kind of service that delightscustomers and keeps them loyal. For instance, speech analytics toolscan be used to understand the root cause of customer pain pointsand to identify process and performance issues with agents. “Thecombination of speech analytics and quality management tools offerscontact center leaders an efficient and effective way to assess agentperformance and take advantage of coaching opportunities whilecustomer interactions are still fresh,” says Bauserman.Strengthen the agentexperienceBest-in-class WFO tools are equipped with multiple agent-centricfeatures that bolster employee ownership and personal accountability.For instance, an agent dashboard allows agents to access recordingsof customer interactions and to self-evaluate their own performanceto identify opportunities for improvement. Plus, state-of-the-artworkforce management tools ensure that agents can be involved inthe creation and management of their work schedules. This includesthe ability for agents to request preferred work hours to managearound appointments and events in their personal lives and to ranktheir preferences for work schedules and vacation time. Just likeemployees in other roles, agents want the ability to balance theirwork schedules and personal life to meet their needs. Indeed, 67%of employees surveyed in an Allstate/National Journal HeartlandMonitor poll cite flexible work hours as important or very importantin their choice of employer. Providing agents a stake in improvingtheir personal performance and determining their schedules canstrengthen employee engagement which can lead to better customerexperiences and lower agent attrition.Leverage the powerof tight WFO and ACDintegrationMany contact center leaders want to be able to upgrade to a newWFO solution but feel restricted due to investments that havebeen placed in the organization’s ACD system. A cloud contactcenter platform that provides tight integration between workforceoptimization and automatic call distribution technologies helpsaddress these concerns while offering several advantages tocompanies. By relying on a single provider for both WFO and ACD, allsoftware updates that are provided for either system are centralizedinto one location. Meanwhile, companies that use third-party ACDtechnologies can also benefit from integration with cloudbasedWFO technologies. This union enables organizations to leveragethe advantages of the cloud without having to re-engineer theircontact center infrastructure, thus retaining their legacy investmentsin on-premise ACD systems. Plus, efficient call routing optimizesagent efficiency while historical ACD data can enable contact centersupervisors to assess KPIs in order to improve workflows and allocateresources.Advanced contact routing can ensure that the customer connects to the right agent to handle their interaction.4

Case StudyScheduling Optimization Helps Airline’s Customer Service SoarTheChallengeOne of the world’s leading airlines conducteda data driven study to compare schedulesgenerated by traditional workforcemanagement (WFM) technologies availablein the market. Disappointing results inschedule efficiency levels led the airline toteam with its IT organization to pioneer itsown proprietary technologies. Continuedinterest in improving schedule efficienciesand service levels led the airline to evaluateavailable WFM technologies to determinewhether any are providing optimalscheduling capabilities.TheSolutionThe airline elected NICE inContact CXoneWorkforce Management. CXone WorkforceManagement software optimizes totallabor costs by creating schedules with thehighest efficiency possible in a contactcenter environment. Proprietary optimizationmodels and algorithms calculate the bestpossible fit between agents, skills, contactvolumes, and servicing goals. Concurrentschedule optimization technology validatesthat work and off days, daily start times,break times, and other activities arecalculated within individual agent schedulesto align with the overall requirements of theairline’s contact center.TheResultsCXone Workforce Management optimalscheduler has achieved 98.5% scheduleefficiency while reducing excess agent hoursby 73%. The software has also generated a12% savings in scheduling costs comparedto all WFM software evaluated by theairline, including its proprietary schedulingsystem. Schedules generated by CXoneWorkforce Management optimal schedulerhave resulted in 100% elimination of agentshortages.The combination of speech analytics and quality management tools offer contact center leadersan efficient and effective way to assess agent performance and take advantage of coachingopportunities while customer interactions are still freshMaking Workforce Optimization Sizzle toDeliver Better Customer Experiences5