Staff turnover is higher in the contact center than in almost any other industry. A common assumption is that call center attrition is simply a fact of life - it can't be controlled or 'fixed'. I'd like to challenge that assumption. One of the responsibilities of call center managers and team leaders is to constantly assess the reasons why people leave the center. Perhaps more importantly, it’s also critical to talk to happy staff and find out what keeps them there and constantly strive to reduce unwanted turnover.

UK businesses are firmly committed to a flexible working future but the majority are still in the planning stage of their hybrid working projects according to a new industry survey of contact centre industry professionals.

What is your contact center service level goal? Odds are, some or all of the groups are at either 80/20, 70/30 or some combination of those. They are extremely common. Do you use average speed of answer (ASA)? If so, is it 20 seconds or 30 seconds? Those are by far the most utilized ASAs. But what do these actually mean and how do you know if you have the right measure?

These familiar metrics are critical to managing every contact center. And it’s vital to take them into account properly within the workforce management process. The problem is, they all sound very similar and are sometimes confused with one another. Let’s examine them one by one.

Matt Rumins, European Head of Customer Success at Intradiem, argues that while these technologies can empower humans, they neither can nor should ever replace them. 

Keir Woolhouse, Commercial Director at miPerform, writes about how virtually every COO/senior contact centre leader is struggling to meet their KPI/Service Level targets with the resources available to them.

Join Alvaria on 18^th April at 4:00 PM BST for the webinar, Is Automation and AI Taking Over the Call Centre? Does the “Less Human” Approach Work with Your Customers?  

We build strength when we focus on how we collaborate and who we do this with. When we bring together trusted data, analysis and insight alongside a group of people with a collective desire to improve, we can achieve greatness.

Powerful member stories reveal a sea-change in empowering operational teams and developing the role of real-time in our new hybrid world. Alison Conaghan and Dave Vernon explore the operational end of the planning cycle.

As planners do we see time away from the operation mainly as a cost to control? Instead, how could we analyse where each different area of shrinkage time is adding value? We need to look from the colleague as well as the customer and commercial point of view.

Dave Vernon explores how we can look at shrinkage as a value not a loss, and change how we think about shrinkage targets.

Originally broadcast Monday 15th May 2023, 09:30

Hear from The Forum team on this year's theme - Strength in Numbers, The Value of Community and what this personally means to them. This thought provoking session will frame the week of learning that will be available through the rest of the Virtual Conference and challenge you to own your learning.

Originally broadcast Monday 15th May 2023, 12:30

WEM and wellbeing, understanding AX during operational change. Join Sabio's expert team to discover the power of their new and cutting-edge wellbeing technology, integrated into the agent desktop and WEM capabilities. This innovative approach provide a systematic view of the impact of the workplace on the employee, as well as practical guidance to promote success.

Originally broadcast Monday 15th May 2023, 13:15

Powering Game Changing Contact Centres. QStory will be showing you how to use next level automation to supercharge agent engagement and unlock maximum performance.  

Originally broadcast Tuesday 16th May 2023, 13:15

Forecasting and AI working together to drive Accuracy. Join Colin and Graeme from NICE as they will  be demonstrating the role of data and AI in the forecasting process, and how it drives improved accuracy.

Originally broadcast Tuesday 16th May 2023, 15:15

Join Chris Rainsforth and Chris Mounce from EvaluAgent for a discussion on the ever increasing presence of AI and the place it has in Quality Assurance.

Originally broadcast Wednesday 17th May 2023, 12:30

One Workforce. The Future of Customer Contact? Join this fascinating session with Verint as we explore how to engage customers in the right way at the right time by removing role and people silos to increase capacity, flexibility, and agility. 45mins

Originally broadcast Wednesday 17th May 2023, 13:15

2023 Workforce & Global Operation Leader Insights. Centrical recently surveyed over 500 global enterprise operations leaders across industries about the current state of workforce engagement management and how their leadership initiatives tie to company growth goals. The results were astounding!

eGain Special Edition: Knowledge Management for Dummies - The first and only publication of its kind, this booklet defines and demystifies KM. It also discusses how to select solution partners and succeed in KM initiatives.The booklet is also chock full of real-world success stories and best-practice tips for success. 

The advent of ChatGPT seems to represent a quantum leap in the capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) to reshape the world we live in. Things are moving quickly, and organisations must begin now to think about how they can harness the power of AI to improve their performance beyond what basic process automation has long made possible. 
 

A new hire leaves after 25 days on the job – or never shows up for their first day. Or perhaps an employee with five years at the company submits their resignation, taking their experience and knowledge with them. Whatever the scenario, attrition comes with high costs to teams and the enterprise. Download Centrical's Ebook to read their top tips on attrition.

Business Systems signs a channel partner agreement with NTT TechnoCross Corporation, offering organisations the ability to unlock real time, actionable insights from their voice communications.  

We see how operational playbooks prepare us, so we’re poised to take the best actions, not looking back and wondering what has happened.

An operating model is like a set of playbooks. You layer down into the detail with a hierarchy of playbooks. You can evolve them step-by-step as your operating strategy requires.
 

We are each unique, one of a kind, so we don’t experience events in the same way. Yet we live in a complex, nuanced world, where working together has never been more important. Dawn Wray shares insights from the world of psychotherapy to explore the things we can ‘do’ to ‘be’ better together.

At a recent Strategy & Leadership discussion by The Forum, we focused on the theme “Strength in Numbers”, highlighting the crucial role of community and relationships in successfully navigating uncertainty - of which there has been an abundance of in recent times.

We build strength in numbers when we collaborate and learn together. Good facilitation is a critical skill for all professionals, at any stage of their career.

Calabrio customers swept The 2023 Forum Awards with 8 shortlisted and 4 wins, including the Department for Education and Hoover Candy who both picked up prestigious Planning awards. Join self-confessed WFO enthusiast and expert, Scott Budding, for a lively discussion on best practice from our award-winning customers, and live demonstration of the top capabilities of Calabrio's solution as voted by our users! 

The goal of workforce management (WFM) is to optimize the deployment of the most valuable - and costly - resource in every contact center: the employees.  That won’t happen unless you optimize the shifts of your employees. Yet we often see contact centers using old-fashioned fixed shifts and rotas even when they have a WFM system that enables more sophisticated scheduling. Why does that happen? Why is it a bad idea? And what is the best way to transition from fixed shifts to optimized schedules?

The purpose of a forecast isn’t to predict the future, it is to prepare for it. A good forecast highlights the level of flexibility we need. This skill is vital as we face continuing waves of change.
 

Calabrio, the workforce performance company, has announced that business process outsourcer (BPO) The Contact Company (TCC) has selected Calabrio ONE software to support the company’s ambitious growth plans. TCC plans to implement a broad range of Calabrio’s automated, data-driven solutions to support the contact centre complexity of its growing client base and hybrid-working in a multi-channel customer service environment.