A Sponsored Article by inContact
Today, many contact centers are still thought of as cost centers. But, forward-thinking contact center leaders are working to transform their organizations into entities that deliver outstanding customer experiences while also contributing to topline revenue.
A significant factor weighing down the contact center—and hindering optimal performance—is one that contact centers deal with daily: disconnected workforce optimization (WFO) and contact center infrastructure systems. WFO and ACDIVRDialer infrastructure systems don’t talk to each other, even when purchased from the same vendor. The infrastructure pushes data to the WFO system, but the WFO system doesn’t share information back. They are not integrated.
Contact center leaders have become accustomed to this siloed world, with different data stored in different systems. Teams spend precious time manually checking performance, adjusting assignments and switching activities. Agents can miss important cues from customers, and corrective actions can be lacking.
From Lost Opportunities to Standout Moments
It’s time to integrate the core contact center platform and WFO systems. It’s time for the Workforce-Intelligent Contact Center™. Contact center big-picture objectives, while formidable, seem straightforward enough:
- Cut operating costs and minimize capital expenditures
- Optimize workforce performance, efficiency and quality
- Reduce time spent managing complex solutions
- Improve customer experiences, retention, loyalty and share of wallet
- Increase revenue
But, with disconnected infrastructure and WFO systems, the means to these ends can be cumbersome and unnecessarily complicated. The result? Lost opportunities. Instead, contact centers could be creating standout moments.
Disconnected Infrastructure and WFO Systems
Today, contact center infrastructure pushes data to the WFO system for scheduling and call monitoring. But that’s where the communication ends. In the traditional model, there’s no performance data sent from the WFO system back to the infrastructure.
Under present conditions, there’s no systematic process to update, inform or make the contact center infrastructure smarter. There’s no automated process to improve future scheduling, adjust call monitoring, prompt opportunistic outbound calls, or to create new campaigns. Instead, these changes have to be made manually by staff gathering performance data from multiple reports and making adjustments—all while trying to make the best decisions for the business.
The Integrated Workforce- Intelligent Contact Center
The Workforce-Intelligent Contact Center is a contact center with integrated infrastructure and WFO systems. This integration means that the WFO system provides data to the core contact center system. Next, the system responds appropriately and provides direction on what logical decisions and changes should be made for optimal performance.
Think of the WFO system as a collection of sensors—sensors that gather information on the front lines of a contact center’s operation. The sensors relay this data to the ACD and, because the WFO and ACD systems are integrated, the ACD is able to make intelligent changes and send new “marching orders” to the WFO.
Put simply, the Workforce-Intelligent Contact Center is an intelligent entity. It gathers data, like performance and scheduling information, from the WFO system, and responds to changing conditions by adjusting future campaigns and activities.
The upshot of this automated communication, learning and response is a more powerful, agile and effective contact center. The Workforce-Intelligent Contact Center is empowered to convert lost opportunities to standout moments—for agents, customers and the contact center as a whole.
Contact Center Excellence: Becoming An Enterprise Partner
As the contact center evolves to a Workforce-Intelligent Contact Center, improved outcomes lead to changed perceptions. The contact center is no longer simply a cost center. Instead, it’s a hub for customer engagement, interaction and outstanding service—all while delivering cost efficiency and contributing revenue.
This expanded and elevated role is game changing. The Workforce-Intelligent Contact Center makes the entire enterprise more competitive—one with reduced costs, more loyal customers, increased revenue and an improved customer experience.