What Is Workforce Management?

In today's fast-paced business environment, managing a workforce effectively can be the difference between success and failure. Enter workforce management (WFM): a crucial strategy for improving the performance and efficiency of an organization's employees. Customer service and field service organizations depend on workforce management software to avoid scheduling conflicts, scale workers for seasonal employment, and analyze data to improve productivity.

This comprehensive guide will explore the fundamentals of workforce management, including its key components, tools, and best practices. Whether you're a small business owner, a manager or dispatcher, or a service leader, understanding how to implement effective workforce management techniques can lead to improved productivity, increased employee satisfaction, and ultimately, better business outcomes. Join us as we delve into the world of workforce management.

• What does workforce management mean?
• Why is workforce management important?
• Workforce management examples
• What are the benefits of workforce management?
• What are some challenges of workforce management?
• Workforce management best practices and tips
• How to choose the right workforce management software
• Provide agents and techs with the right workforce management software tools

Workforce management involves strategically allocating resources and creating budgets, records, schedules, and processes so you have the right type and amount of employees to keep your enterprise running and growing efficiently.

Tools for this aspect of business have been around for ages — from time clocks that help factories orchestrate mass production to manual service logs showing when service techs are in the field addressing customer issues. Over time, iterations of workforce management methods have been refined with automation and standardization. Today, innovative WFM software — often improved with AI — helps leadership easily master the intricacies of scheduling and optimizing staffing and service operations.

Mobile workforce management

Mobile WFM applies to employees who use mobile apps and devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Thanks to the rise of cloud-based applications accessible on any internet-connected device, millions of workers can do their jobs almost anywhere and anytime. Mobile workforce management tools keep them all working at peak productivity.

Field service workforce management

Workforce management is especially critical in field service, where keeping in-person appointments with customers is often a mainstay part of the business. WFM software allows managers to assign work based on the staff with the right qualifications, use the technician who's closest to the job, accommodate urgent appointments, and complete jobs efficiently. In addition, workforce management can enable real-time collaborations, typically over video, and monitor worker locations, usually with GPS capabilities.

Workforce management helps businesses ensure they have the right talent in place to get essential work done. In customer and field service, businesses are at risk if they don’t have enough agents in a contact center or technicians in the field.

WFM software gives employers economical, automated tools to predict the number of workers they need during both slow and busy seasons and across different channels. Many employers have adopted cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools for workforce management. In the SaaS model, software companies that develop the solution keep it up to date and tackle security issues — saving their customers from having to deal with these challenges.

Let's say you manage a contact center for a large retailer. Your staff includes hundreds of contact center agents who help customers across every channel — voice, text, video, and social media — and field service technicians who help install and troubleshoot appliances. The company recently modernized its WFM system, adopting a cloud-based suite of workforce tools. These are some key use cases:

• Get people to work on time. A scheduling app lets you automatically assign agents to specific jobs and get field service techs to their assigned worksites. It's not just a top-down process. The software lets workers negotiate with colleagues to swap shifts. Agents and field service techs can work out scheduling conflicts on their own.
• Orchestrate field service technicians. The retailer sells complex items like home security, entertainment systems, or appliances. A software platform can help managers know which techs with the right skillsets are needed for any given appointment, oversee their workloads, and recognize good work or encourage improvement.
• Supervise mobile and remote workers. A workforce management platform can ensure fair, equitable scheduling and supervision of offsite staff.
• Track vacation time and days off. Software can help you integrate people's time-off requirements so complicated scheduling is easier to visualize and plan around.
• Fine-tune customer support. Customer data tells you that people who buy electronic gadgets tend to make more customer support calls at specific times of day or night. WFM tools can help you make sure you have electronics experts available when customers need them.
• Organize staff events. Workforce management software can help fold events like trainings, team meetings, and all-hands announcements into your work schedule.
• Measure employee effectiveness. Software can track valuable employee data that allows supervisors, managers, and leadership to make wise decisions when promoting or giving raises to customer service and field agents.
• Project future staffing needs. An analytics app can study previous staffing assignments and use predictive AI algorithms to suggest the exact number of agents you'll need during a holiday crunch. If a new product release points to a rising demand for contact center agents or field service technicians, the software can help you plan for it.
• Ensure compliance. Workforce management software helps you avoid scheduling agents for more hours than employee regulations allow. Plus, collective bargaining contract data can be imported into the system to ensure you're in sync with union rules.

Let's dig deeper into how a workforce management platform drives better outcomes in customer service operations.

Standardization

Managers, agents, and techs log in to a central WFM hub to find the critical data they'll need throughout their workday. There's far less confusion about who is on duty and what work needs to get done because everything stays current in an online application.

Flexibility

Workforce management gives employers easy-to-use, transparent tools for understanding their employees' scheduling needs. The software also can show employees who else is on staff during their shifts and could take their place if needed. Data can be tracked across hours, weeks, months, and years. Leaders can use this data to find the optimal balance between under- and overstaffing.

Productivity

WFM software removes paper-based processes for scheduling contact center agents and field service technicians. For field service technicians, this can really improve the bottom line, as it reduces the likelihood of spending money on sending the wrong person to an appointment. In addition, staff can learn their assignments quickly from an online dashboard, which gets them to work helping customers sooner.

More customer service operations are using advanced automation like conversational AI, which uses learning automation that allows people to talk to bots in plain, simple language. This tech can accelerate service because agents and technicians have faster access to authoritative information, so they spend less time looking up facts and guidance.

In cloud-based WFM environments, IT teams don't have to worry about keeping their WFM platform secure and current: Their SaaS vendor takes care of that. This frees IT pros to focus on more important technology tasks.

Morale

Tracking data shows the employees who have the highest attendance and greatest efficiency. WFM systems produce precise data on these and other performance indicators. Managers hoping to avoid favoritism can rely on real-world data to reward their top agents and techs.

Personalization

Workforce management software can connect to a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that provides demographic data and records of buying behaviors and preferences. Customer service agents and field service techs can view CRM data to gain a better understanding of the buyers they deal with every day. This helps them deliver a more personalized customer experience.

Adopting a workforce management software solution for your customer service operation can involve challenges to consider, such as:

• User experience. Agents and managers need an intuitive, easy-to-use interface and set of features to improve their ability to please customers. The platform should also offer a similar experience for mobile and remote workers.
• Resistance to change. Busy agents and field service techs develop habits and processes that work well for them. They may not feel they have enough time or resources to deal with learning a new software platform.
• Security. The software must be trusted — with strong built-in defenses against cyberattacks and protections for sensitive customer and employee data.
• Compliance. Workforce management technologies should simplify and streamline managers' ability to operate within the bounds of labor laws and collective bargaining agreements.
• Analytics. The best workforce management software includes advanced data visualization and reporting capabilities. Managers and leaders may need training to take full advantage of analytics.
• Integration. Workforce management platforms need data from customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, payroll, and other critical business applications. Getting workforce management tools to dovetail with the rest of your technology stack can be complex.

• Analyze your technology stack. To simplify integration, take an inventory of all technologies relevant to your customer service operations — especially payroll, human resources, and customer relationship management. Make sure to understand compatibility issues and explore opportunities to connect with other software via application programming interfaces (APIs).
• Create an implementation strategy. Develop a detailed plan that gets you to your go-live date with minimal disruptions.
• Encourage adoption. Get your staff involved in selecting the new software to overcome resistance and foster acceptance. Find staff members who tend to be early-adopters and have them tout the benefits. Before the software goes live, make sure everyone is fully trained on it.
• Transform processes. Don't recreate scheduling processes in your new software platform. Instead, look for processes that can be remapped with fewer steps and more efficiency.
• Test thoroughly. Testing your workforce management operations before going live will ensure business operations run smoothly.
• Monitor and measure. Your workforce management platform will generate data that lets you quantify your customer service team's effectiveness and monitor their progress. Built-in dashboards and visualizations help you share this kind of data with leadership.
• Add features gradually and strategically. Workforce management platforms often have dozens of features. Start with the ones that can deliver immediate results, such as automated scheduling, and then fold in new capabilities based on lessons learned in the initial implementation.

Your new workforce management platform must have the optimal mix of features and affordability for your specific requirements. Customer service and field service teams, for example, need a solution with a broad suite of functions that help agents and field service techs connect with customers and encourage repeat business.

Features to look for

• Case management tools. Software should make it easy to create standardized records of issues like customer service requests.
• Field service options. Applications should automate scheduling, document services performed, and track follow-up visits.
• Generative AI. GenAI can help users of the software and customers alike being more productive and ultimately, happier.

Keys to smart buying decisions

• Map out your requirements. List your current solution’s shortcomings and the outcomes you hope to achieve by overcoming them. Include your budget and training needs.
• Consult with staff. Have your agents and techs spell out how your current methods get in the way of helping customers.
• Read the reviews. Software review websites share real-world insights from users who deal with WFM software every day.
• Reach out to vendors. When you're comfortable that you know what you want, start contacting potential vendors and booking software demos. Ask them about the total cost of ownership of their solutions, including service, support, and upgrades. Get specifics on:
• Compatibility, integration challenges, and APIs
• Service level agreements (SLAs) and uptime guarantees
• Scalability for seasonal demand

Software alone won't turn your customer service agents and field service technicians into superheroes. But modern workforce management software can do wonders for customer service by:

• Automating scheduling so managers have more time to build your business
• Giving agents and techs the autonomy to settle scheduling conflicts among themselves
• Delivering data-driven insights that fuel better decision-making

There's a lot to figure out. Your workforce management solution must be the best choice for your agents, techs, and customers. It'll need to work well with your current technology stack, and you'll have to align your needs with the capabilities of a proven WFM vendor. Success depends on using all the assets at your command — people, technologies, and the lessons you learn — to bring everybody together.