Planning for happiness

A planner’s life isn't always easy. Even just taking into account the expected workflows can be a challenge, especially as more contact channels, such as chat, social media, and email are added. In addition, you need to adhere to certain pre-agreed service levels, also when there’s a need to upscale unexpectedly. But to what extent do you go along with your team’s wishes regarding the allocation of their hours?

Flexibility

In the blog post we published two weeks ago, we talked about the heroes of the CCC and how important it is to help your employees find the right balance between work and their private lives. Especially in current times, this is not always easy. Working from home has become the norm, which makes it useful if you can plan your work around other ‘obligations’. For example, work a few hours in the morning, have the afternoon off, and then work a few more hours in the evening when you have nowhere to go because of the imposed curfew.

The convenience of a WFM solution

Many small and medium-sized companies still create their schedules in Excel, which can make offering flexibility to service employees a challenge. Sounds familiar? A Workforce Management system offers the solution. It finds the right match between the expected volume of customer interactions across all channels, the agreed service levels, and the preferences and contracts of employees. This ensures a high degree of predictability while remaining flexible enough to make adjustments where necessary.

Are schedule changes time-consuming?

But let’s take it one step further. How accessible are the work schedules to your service employees? Apart from sick leave, how flexible are you in allowing schedule changes? Because even though primary schools have opened again, what to do if a service employee’s child is told to stay home unexpectedly, perhaps due to a suspected COVID infection at school? That’s guaranteed to make work a challenge that day. And what if he himself wakes up with an insatiable need to enjoy the snow or the spring sunshine? At times like those, it is nice if he has the opportunity to adjust his work schedule. Trade shifts with a colleague perhaps. How do you deal with that? Do these kinds of adjustments take up a lot of your time as a planner?

(H)appy employees

To make this process a lot easier and much less time-consuming, an app for agents and planners offers a welcome solution. Some WFM platforms have their own app, for others, it is available separately. They allow employees to view and change their schedules on their smartphones. Approved change requests are automatically adjusted in the schedule, so the staffing level remains optimal. In the event of illness or other cancellations, you as a planner can broadcast a message to your team to arrange a replacement. Superfast and handy!

Tools to satisfy

We already established how AI and knowledge management can contribute to the employee experience (EX), and now also see the positive impact that a well-running WFM platform can have on this!

Are you looking for a suitable WFM solution or are you curious how to get the most out of your existing platform while offering your service teams the flexibility and ease of use they ask for? Let us know!