10 Benefits of Using WFM in the Back Office

Florian Garnier at Calabrio explains how applying workforce management (WFM) solutions beyond the contact centre can enhance resource planning, improve service levels, and create a more efficient, customer-focused operation.

On the frontline, day in, day out, contact centre agents are often the face (and voice) of your brand, responsible for delivering great customer service, managing grievances and expectations.

The importance of good workforce management (WFM) practices to help them achieve this can’t be over emphasised. Comprehensive resource planning ensures adequate staffing levels, so agents are not overworked and are empowered to deliver the best possible customer experience.

However, delivering great customer service doesn’t stop at the frontline. Whilst these employees are doing their best to process and manage incoming requests in a timely manner, many contact centres don’t have the same well-established processes for back office operations.

The lack of organisation of this workload and the disconnect from agents makes operations inefficient and slow.

No matter how hard the frontline works to handle customer requests, they must be supported by an equally efficient back office to get the resolutions customers seek, and unfortunately, back office operations can be a virtual blackhole of information.

While frontline agents have forecasts and schedules, back office workers can also benefit from WFM solutions to help them prioritise and act on customer requests and complaints. Taking advantage of customisable solutions can improve efficiency and resource allocation too.

Here are ten benefits of utilising WFM in the back office:

1. Effective Resource Allocation

A WFM solution can align staffing levels with workloads in the back office in the same way as it does inside the contact centre.

It can ensure the right people are in place at the right time, minimising the likelihood of backlogs and reducing idle time. By optimising schedules, WFM will highlight any potential gaps that may not be immediately apparent to managers, averting problems further along the line.

2. Forecast Accuracy

Contact centre WFM tools excel at gathering and analysing vast tracts of historical data to identify trends and forecast workload accurately.

Applying similar analysis to back office operations enables better anticipation and planning for variations in demand, and more efficient task distribution.

Especially important for seasonal peaks and troughs, it ensures availability of relevant administrative resources and infrastructure support, including IT help.

3. Increased Efficiency

By automating scheduling, task prioritisation, and performance monitoring, WFM systems reduce labour-intensive manual processes, streamline workflows, and improve overall productivity.

Management staff are freed from error-prone tasks such as updating and manipulating spreadsheets for rosters, holidays, and performance analysis. Instead, they can focus on value-add tasks such as improving processes that enhance the customer experience.

4. Improved Employee Engagement

Back office personnel also benefit from self-service tools for managing their shifts and time-off requests. This type of flexible scheduling promotes employee wellbeing, helping staff to determine their own work-life balance, without impacting the contact centre’s service levels.

A degree of self-regulation additionally enables staff to cover gaps by swapping shifts or lunch breaks with colleagues without management intervention but customised to the organisation’s own specific rules and roles.

5. Consistent Service Levels

WFM streamlines handling of tasks, prioritising critical ones to meet required deadlines. This maintains a reliable level and quality of service across different departments. Additionally, real-time assessment of backlogs routes work to the most capable staff available.

Marrying up the most suitable person to the job in hand reduces stress levels by not overburdening less experienced staff, and reduces bottlenecks, helping to achieve better and faster outcomes. Automated quality assurance can also provide valuable feedback to individuals about their performance.

6. Real-Time Visibility

Built-in desktop analytics provides an added advantage by showing in real-time what back office staff are working on and whether they are using company-approved or unapproved web applications.

This information helps managers prioritise tasking during shifts and identifies less productive or passive time spent on digital channels.

It gives visibility of schedule adherence, enabling better resource allocation, and highlights inefficient processes, as well as where further training could be required.

Having timely data-driven insights means WFM strategies can be refined to improve back office performance, which in turn helps contact centre agents deliver a higher standard of customer service.

7. Data-Driven Decision Making

Eliminating bias or misinterpretation of data is another benefit of WFM that is equally useful in back office departments.

While it can be tempting to stick to habitual working practices, the assimilation of comprehensive, accurate figures and statistics enables decisions to be made on data, not hunches.

It provides insights into employee performance, task completion rates, and workload patterns, allowing managers to make informed decisions on staffing requirements, absence management, training needs, and process improvement.

8. Cost Reduction

By eliminating overstaffing and reducing unnecessary overtime, WFM tools help back offices operate more cost-effectively. Consistent monitoring ensures productivity or service quality isn’t affected.

Also, reliable forecasting allows more confidence in forward planning so budgets and resources can be managed prudently, taking advantage of longer lead times to negotiate better vendor pricing.

9. Compliance and Accountability Support

Monitoring and tracking capabilities within WFM help back offices adhere to SLAs and internal policies, with clear accountabilities for task completion.

Automatic encryption of customer data while it’s in use, in transit, and in storage supports a range of regulatory obligations covering privacy and security, including PCI, GDPR, HIPAA, MiFID and CCPA. This is vital for maintaining compliance standards throughout an organisation.

10. Cross-Departmental Synergies

Using the same WFM platform for both front and back office operations leverages synergies between them, enabling easier and better collaboration, data sharing, and overall workforce optimisation.

Standardised reporting across functions gives a comprehensive view of what’s working and where attention is needed, and can uncover hidden sales opportunities that would benefit from further investment.

With many organisations continuously planning for the next seasonal spikes and dips in demand, it pays to have the back office and contact centre working in sync.

Unifying the systems eliminates duplicative data and streamlines workflows, ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Why give yourself the extra headache of integrating disparate systems or manual processes, when you could empower both teams and have in depth analysis at your fingertips?

For more information about Calabrio - visit the Calabrio Website

Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.

Author: Calabrio
Reviewed by: Megan Jones