For contact centers, accurate forecasting and efficient resource management are critical to delivering customer service and with sound operational efficiency. A key element in achieving these goals is skills-based planning, which aligns each agent’s specific skills with forecasted demand of customer interactions.
Table of Contents
This approach ensures that the right agents are available at the right times to handle specific tasks, leading to improved performance, customer satisfaction, and cost efficiency.
Take a look at the key factors in skills-based planning for contact center forecasting and its impact on business operations.
Understanding Skills-Based Planning
Skills-based planning goes beyond traditional workforce management by focusing on the unique abilities of each agent. This method involves categorizing agents based on their competencies and matching these skills to forecasted customer needs.
For instance, agents may be specialized in handling technical support, sales inquiries, billing issues, or multiple languages. By leveraging these skills effectively, contact centers can optimize their workforce and enhance service delivery.
Key Factors in Skills-Based Planning
Identifying Core Skills
The first step in skills-based planning is to identify the core skills required to meet customer demands. This involves analyzing historical data to determine the types of interactions that occur most frequently and the skills needed to handle them efficiently.
Common skills include technical expertise, product knowledge, problem-solving abilities, communication skills, and language proficiency.
Agent Skill Assessment
Once the core skills are identified, the next step is to assess the skills of each agent. This can be done through performance reviews, training records, and direct feedback.
Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each agent allows managers to assign tasks that align with their abilities, improving efficiency and job satisfaction.
Forecasting Demand for Skills
Accurate forecasting is essential for effective skills-based planning. This involves predicting the volume and type of customer interactions and determining the required skills for each type of interaction.
Advanced contact center forecasting software and historical data analysis play a crucial role in this process. By understanding peak times and common customer issues, contact centers can forecast the demand for specific skills more accurately.
Dynamic Scheduling
Dynamic scheduling is a critical component of skills-based planning. This approach ensures that agents with the right skills are scheduled at the right times to meet predicted demand.
Workforce management (WFM) systems can automate this process, creating schedules that match agent skills with customer needs. Dynamic scheduling helps in balancing workloads, reducing idle time, and avoiding overwork.
Real-Time Adjustments
Customer interactions can be unpredictable, and real-time adjustments are necessary to maintain service levels. WFM systems with real-time monitoring capabilities can track agent availability and performance, allowing managers to make immediate adjustments.
For example, if there is a sudden surge in technical support calls, managers can reassign skilled agents to handle these calls promptly.
Ongoing Training and Development
Continuous training and development are essential to maintain a skilled workforce. Regular training sessions help agents acquire new skills and improve existing ones, ensuring they can handle a wide range of customer interactions.
Investing in agent development not only enhances service quality but also boosts employee morale and retention.
Benefits of Skills-Based Planning
Improved Customer Satisfaction
Skills-based planning ensures that customers are connected with agents who have the expertise to resolve their issues quickly and efficiently. This leads to higher first-call resolution rates, shorter handling times, and improved customer satisfaction.
Enhanced Operational Efficiency
By aligning agent skills with customer needs, contact centers can optimize their workforce and reduce inefficiencies. This results in better resource utilization, lower operational costs, and increased productivity.
Increased Flexibility
Skills-based planning provides greater flexibility in managing the workforce. Managers can quickly adjust schedules and reassign agents based on real-time demand, ensuring that service levels are maintained even during peak times or unexpected surges in interactions.
Better Employee Engagement
Agents are more likely to feel engaged and motivated when they are assigned tasks that match their skills and interests. Skills-based planning promotes job satisfaction, reduces burnout, and encourages continuous learning and development.
Strategic Insights
Implementing skills-based planning provides valuable insights into workforce capabilities and customer needs. Analyzing performance data helps identify trends and areas for improvement, supporting strategic decision-making and long-term planning.
Case Study: Skills-Based Planning in Action
Consider a hypothetical contact center, “TechAssist Solutions,” which implemented skills-based planning to improve its operations:
Step 1: Identifying Core Skills TechAssist Solutions analyzed historical data to identify common customer issues and the skills needed to resolve them. They identified technical support, billing inquiries, and multilingual support as key areas.
Step 2: Agent Skill Assessment The company conducted a thorough assessment of their agents' skills through performance reviews and feedback. This helped them understand the strengths and areas for development for each agent.
Step 3: Forecasting Demand for Skills Using advanced forecasting tools, TechAssist Solutions predicted the volume and type of interactions for the upcoming months. They identified peak times for technical support and multilingual interactions.
Step 4: Dynamic Scheduling TechAssist Solutions’ WFM system created dynamic schedules that matched agent skills with forecasted demand. Agents with technical expertise were scheduled during peak times for technical support calls.
Step 5: Real-Time Adjustments During a sudden surge in billing inquiries, real-time monitoring allowed managers to reassign agents with billing expertise to handle the increased volume, ensuring service levels were maintained.
Results
- Improved Customer Satisfaction: Higher first-call resolution rates and shorter handling times led to increased customer satisfaction.
- Enhanced Efficiency: Optimized scheduling reduced idle time and operational costs.
- Employee Engagement: Agents felt more valued and motivated, leading to lower turnover rates.
Skills-Based Planning & Contact Center Forecasting
Skills-based planning is a key part of contact center forecasting. By identifying core skills and agent abilities, managers are in a better position to respond and plan for forecasted demand.
