Mobile WFMDefining Success for Next

Generation Contact Centers

Whitepaper

iwww.callcopy.com

Contents1. Introduction 12. What Is Mobile WFM? 23. Top Reasons for Adopting Mobile WFM 34. Mobile WFM Advantages 4

Flexibility and Convenience 4Facilitate Use of Work-at-Home Agents 4Improve Adherence/Scheduling via Real-time Indicators 5Enable Communication Between Different Generations of Workers 6 Leveraging Social Media 6Lower IT and Admin Costs 6

5. Considerations when Selecting a Mobile WFM Vendor 7About CallCopy 8Next Steps 8

Published by CallCopy, Inc. Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be altered, transformed or built upon. You are free to transmit, distribute, and/or copy this entire document wholly and unaltered, including this notice. If any part of this document is transmitted, distributed, or copied, it must contain this notice and/or be attributed to CallCopy. The information contained in this document does not constitute legal advice, and should not be considered a replacement for sound legal counsel. CallCopy shall be in no way liable for any use or misuse of the information presented herein.

Mobile WFM: Defining Success for Next Generation Contact Centers CallCopy

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Adopting a mobile workforce management (WFM) solution can define success for forward-looking contact centers that employ millennial generation staff who largely use smartphones and tablets for their personal and social communication. Leveraging these mobile devices to connect contact center managers, supervisors and agents can increase the organization’s efficiency as well as staff and customer satisfaction.

According to DMG Consulting’s 2012 Contact Center Workforce Management Market Report, “Millennials entering the workforce are very different from their ‘Boomer’ predecessors and … are challenging workplace conventions… by demanding more non-traditional schedules, flexible time-off policies, remote work arrangements, and other concessions to support an improved work/life balance. The needs of this generation must be addressed by the next generation WFM solutions.”1

Adopting mobile technologies for workforce management efficiency improvement can work to an organization’s advantage. This paper provides guidance for adopting mobile WFM and highlights the benefits for customer contact centers and work-at-home agents.

1 DMG Consulting, LLC, Contact Center Workforce Management Market Report, 2012.

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Mobile WFM enables anytime, anywhere access to real-time KPIs and supports better communication between contact centers and their millennial generation staff.

Mobile WFM: Defining Success for Next Generation Contact Centers CallCopy

Introduction

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Mobile WFM is the practice of contact center staff accessing remote or cloud-based WFM information and communicating via smartphones and tablets. Using mobile devices enables staff to stay connected from any location, at any time, wherever connectivity is available. They can use their own or company-provided mobile devices to establish and maintain contact with one another. These mobile workers have instant access to current work activity and performance status and can send messages and respond immediately to inquiries related to their work.

The trend of permitting employees to use their own mobile devices for work (known as BYOD - Bring Your Own Device) is enabling employers to offload mobile device and service plan cost burdens when adopting mobile WFM. In the United States today, over 150 million staff-owned smartphones and tablets are used for work, a number predicted to more than double, reaching 350 million by 2014.2 Currently, 74% of business professionals and 69% of IT staff own tablets.3 According to Forrester Research, 77% of organizations now support BYOD.4 This broad acceptance of mobile devices for employee communication for work activity can prove to be a boon for contact centers, back offices, branches, field service centers, hospitals and retail stores who undertake mobile WFM.

2 Juniper Research, Mobile Security Strategies: Threats, Solutions, and Market Forecasts 2012-2017, June, 2012.3 IDG Connect, The Global Shift to Android: Business and IT Professionals, June, 2012.4 Forrester Research, Inc., Consumerization Drives Smartphone Proliferation, December, 2011.

What Is Mobile WFM?

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Taking advantage of the BYOD trend, mobile WFM enables on-the-go staff to engage dynamically with real-time KPI metrics and communicate with their team using smartphones and tablets.

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Mobile WFM provides immediate access to work activity and facilitates performance management. Mobile device users can edit time sheets, approve schedule changes and process time-off requests remotely. They can view real-time dashboards of performance analytics, optimized for viewing on mobile devices, and respond quickly to emerging issues. With instant connections to remote or cloud-based performance data, they can check current operating information and maintain constant contact with involved staff at any time from any location.

Top Reasons for Adopting Mobile WFM

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Table 1: Examples of how mobile WFM may be utilized, by role.

cc: Clarity, CallCopy’s next-generation WFM solution, delivers real-time dashboards, notifications, alerts and reminders to mobile devices, benefiting adherence and staff communication.

Mobile WFM: Defining Success for Next Generation Contact Centers CallCopy

Managers/Supervisors AgentsReal-time adherence monitoring Check work schedulesView schedule & KPI dashboards View performance against co-workersManage schedule requests Submit time-off & overtime requestsProvide real-time coaching Bid on and swap shiftsSend & receive real-time alerts Receive shift reminders

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Flexibility and ConvenienceMobile WFM offers two key advantages for contact centers – flexibility and convenience.

Scheduling Flexibility

Mobile devices provide anywhere-anytime access to the WFM solution. These devices enable managers and supervisors to communicate with staff using text messages, email, social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as enterprise Web portals. Managers and supervisors can check operations and communicate among themselves remotely, as well as ‘push’ messages, such as shift schedule change alerts, wake-up calls and work task reminders to off-duty and work-at-home agents. Remote staff can respond immediately to these messages from wherever they are, make related follow-up inquiries and check work activity status.

Convenience

The convenience of real-time monitoring and reporting enables customer contact staff to be attuned to their operation’s immediate condition and to respond quickly to emerging issues. With mobile WFM access, staff can proactively identify needs and optimize use of resources to keep work activity on track with targeted performance standards.

Facilitate Use of Work-at-Home AgentsOrganizations that deploy work-at-home agents benefit from reduced overhead costs since fewer contact center staff requires less space and support infrastructure. Providing work-at-home agents with mobile device access to the WFM system can also benefit the organization by giving remote agents freedom to be away from their desks while still maintaining constant contact with supervisors and performance metrics.

Mobile WFM Advantages

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Agents working at home use smartphones to interact with supervisors. The convenience of working at home improves morale, fostering optimal work/live balance while improving service quality. Mobile WFM keeps them in constant touch with supervisors to ensure adherence to performance standards.

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Having immediate access to their current KPI dashboards on mobile devices helps at-home agents be as aware of their current performance as their office peers are, and to communicate with their supervisors and teams to handle immediate issues. Like their office counterparts, they receive alerts and reminders that ensure they adhere to established scripts and protocols.

Remote agents can be very productive working via high-speed remote access to their contact center systems. They save the time and cost of commuting to and from the center, which increases their likelihood of achieving an optimal work/life balance, increases their satisfaction with work and encourages them to achieve high performance standards. Mobile WFM is one more tool that can help contact center staff meet their goals. According to Deloitte Consulting, “Employees that can see their performance improving and the impact they are achieving tend to become passionate about their work.”5 Such engaged employees are more likely to be strong contributors to organizational success.

Improve Adherence/Scheduling via Real-time IndicatorsInstant remote access to real-time KPIs enables mobile managers, supervisors and agents to keep operating performance status at their fingertips anywhere at any time. Instant access to this current information enables supervisors to practice real-time performance management more effectively. For example, supervisors can send proactive messages and alerts via SMS and email to out-of-office and work-at-home agents. This enables them to address current work activities and script adherence to immediately improve the quality of service delivery.

With real-time KPIs at hand immediately after a customer interaction, supervisors can focus on real-time corrective coaching and training with agents whose performance is trending below standard. At the same time, real-time indicators enable supervisors to make schedule adjustments based on call volume to more quickly fill shifts, offer over-time and approve shift bids and swap requests.

5 Deloitte Consulting, The Empowered Employee is Coming: Is the World Ready?, Forbes, February, 2012.

cc: Clarity’s real-time dashboards, optimized for viewing on mobile devices, enable staff to monitor their contact center’s KPI’s and adherence levels, and respond immediaately to changing conditions.

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Want to learn more about using work-at-home agents? Download our Building a Work-at-Home Program whitepaper.

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Enable Communication Between Different Generations of WorkersThe millennial generation, aged 18 to 29, has long embraced popular social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. According to Pew Research, “Millennials are the most open to change of any generation. Three-quarters have created a profile on a social networking site. One-in-five have posted a video of themselves online. Eight-three percent have placed their cell phones by their beds while sleeping.”6

So, millennials are likely to readily accept receiving supervisors’ announcements of shift openings, shift bidding and over-time opportunities and acceptance of their requests for shift changes via these preferred communication channels. Consequently, to take advantage of web-based communication, advanced WFM systems, such as CallCopy’s cc: Clarity, have developed social media integrations, along with text messaging, for sending SMS alerts and iCals scheduling reminders that pop up on agents’ mobile devices.

Lower IT and Admin CostsMobile WFM delivers measureable benefits. Salient among these is improved productivity achieved though easy and timely communication among staff. For example, supervisors experience increased ease in quickly filling shifts to meet unexpected rises in call volume. Labor costs are reduced by achieving optimal staffing of shifts, avoiding over- as well as under-staffing.

Supervisors’ mobile connections to agents enable better monitoring and coaching, facilitating quicker adjustments to customer interaction behaviors. Adhering to best practices ensures compliance with rules and regulations. Surveys of customers show increased levels of satisfaction when agents provide quicker resolutions of time-sensitive issues. A soft benefit of adopting mobile WFM is its appeal to millennial generation staff, having the desirable effect of improving their morale and productivity.

6 Pew Research Center, The Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change, February, 2010.

Leveraging Social MediaThe millennial generation that makes up a large part of today’s contact center workforce fully embraces social media. Integrtions within cc: Clarity allow users to effectively communicate with this “social” generation by easily pushing schedule changes and notifications to agents through social media channels, including Facebook and Twitter.

cc: Clarity facilitates communication through social media, allowing management to

effectively communicate with staff in real time.

Mobile WFM: Defining Success for Next Generation Contact Centers CallCopy

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Having recognized the value and benefit of adopting a mobile WFM practice, your organization’s challenge becomes selecting the best WFM solution to accommodate your move to mobile device interaction. Your organization can clarify this initiative by having select WFM system vendors respond to these four key questions:

1. How do your offerings help us meet our mobile WFM needs?

2. Do your offerings provide access to agent schedules and real-time performance?

3. Is your WFM integrated with your workforce optimization (WFO) suite?

4. What are your future plans for enhancing your mobile WFM capabilities?

Mobile WFM: Defining Success for Next Generation Contact Centers CallCopy

Considerations when Selecting a Mobile WFM Vendor

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CallCopy, a leading provider of innovative contact center solutions, is dedicated to ensuring the highest standards of satisfaction. The award-winning, enterprise-proven cc: Discover suite delivers advanced call recording, screen capture, quality management, speech analytics, desktop analytics, performance management, customer satisfaction survey and workforce management capabilities to organizations of all sizes and industries. For more information, visit www.callcopy.com.

Mobile WFM is a powerful tool for managing your contact center and facilitating communications with cross-generational staff, from anywhere at anytime. To learn more about how CallCopy’s cc: Clarity workforce management solution can enable mobile WFM in your organization, please contact us:

• Toll-free: 888.922.5526 x1• Direct/International: +1 614.340.3346• email: info@callcopy.com

Mobile WFM: Defining Success for Next Generation Contact Centers CallCopy

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