According to Dave Hoekstra at Calabrio, Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) is a team sport. Why? Because customers extract most value from their new, comprehensive WEM offering when their workforce planning and quality teams are in step with each other.
After all, workforce management (WFM), quality assurance (QA), and performance coaching departments should collaborate, spot opportunities to leverage each other’s data, and take contact center performance to the next level.
This concept isn’t new, however, many service operations have yet to learn this lesson.
“Too Many Organizations Are Still Working In Silos”
Most customer service leaders do not see the value in working together. This is one of the core reasons why, as Hoekstra puts it: “Most organizations are not fully benefitting from WEM and are still working in silos.”
“It’s very difficult to drive value from a WEM suite if the users of the suite aren’t even talking to each other internally,” he says. “That remains an ongoing challenge.”
Yet, there are additional reasons why WEM investments may not reach their full potential.
For instance, some employees have become very attached to the products they have used - in many cases - for 20 to 30 years.
So, there is often pushback when a manager encourages a switch to a more modern suite. Some department leaders even rip out new tools and replace them with more familiar solutions.
In the world of SaaS-based contact centers, this is becoming much easier to do.
However, by doing so and working in silos, operations limit the vast potential of WEM suites to drive enhanced customer, employee, and business outcomes.
Changing the Status Quo and Driving ROI
Step one to realizing a return on investment is facilitating conversations between customer service leads, discussing how they could use each other’s data to drive ROI.
“A lot of decisions happen at the granular, operational level, when we should be going a little bit higher up and having more of a strategic conversation,” says Hoekstra. “That is where you get the light bulb moments and broader ambitions.”
As an example, consider a WFM leader that understands the potential of using agent evaluation data to inform their schedules.