Each quarter SWPP surveys the workforce planning community on critical workforce planning topics. Over 150 call center professionals representing a wide variety of industries participated and provided insight into this quarter’s survey on workforce management for back office tasks. A similar survey was done in 2014 and again in 2018, and the results of those surveys are contrasted with this current survey to track changes over the years.
Fifty percent of the participants in the current survey work in centers with 500 agents or more. The rest are representative of a wide variety of sizes from under 50 up to 500 agents. The financial, health care, and insurance industries drew the largest number of participants, but all other industries are also well represented. The survey participants in 2014 and 2018 represented a similar distribution of size and industry.
Eighty-four percent of the respondents said they have been asked to forecast or schedule for non-phone, back office tasks. In 2014, 68% of respondents reported being asked to forecast or schedule tasks for non-phone, back office tasks, which grew to 73% by 2018. This is a growing expectation of contact centers, especially the handling of email, chat, and other non-phone activities. In addition, the WFM processes are also being applied to departments with little or no direct customer contact to better manage the completion of their back office tasks.
When asked if the WFM team is currently responsible for forecasting work volume for non-phone, back office tasks, more than two-thirds indicated that they do. This is a slight increase from the 65% handling this in 2014 but similar to the 2018 results.
The respondents were asked if they are currently scheduling personnel for non-phone, back office tasks and three-quarters indicated that they do schedule. This is a slightly higher percentage than forecasting for this work. The percentage of centers doing scheduling is essentially unchanged since 2014.
The respondents were asked to identify all the different kinds of back office, non-phone tasks that they track. The 2024 survey offered different choices than the 2018 survey. Account and document management were the most frequently selected in the 2024 survey, followed closely by data entry and claims. In 2018, email was the most common selection (chosen by approximately half of the respondents). Chat was the second most selected type of task with a significant drop in those who do the remaining types of work. The responses shifted significantly from the 2014 survey, in part because the choices to select from were expanded to include email, chat, and social media.
Those who are tracking the workloads in various off-phone tasks were asked to identify the techniques used to track this work. The most common response was an operational system (typically one used for handling that type of work). The second choice was a proprietary, home-grown system, often necessitated by the unique characteristics of the tasks and/or systems in use. Vendor solutions were the third choice with only a few noting tick sheets or “other” options. The distribution of tools utilized for tracking did not change significantly between the 2014 and 2018 surveys. However, in the 2024 study, more are using vendor solutions and fewer relying on home-grown systems.
Respondents were asked how they report daily statistics for the work types handled. Over 60% report both by agent/staff member and by work type in both 2018 and 2024 surveys. There is good reason to report both sets of data if the information is available as the work stats will help to forecast and schedule and the personnel stats will help with management of the staff’s performance. Compared to the 2014 survey, the percentage reporting by work type only increased slightly from 23% to 29% with an offsetting drop in those reporting both, but in 2024, the reporting by work type dropped
considerably to 19%.
Respondents were asked if/how they validate the information that is reported by the staff in terms of the work handled. The largest percentage (40%) indicate that they do not validate the information provided. Approximately one-third indicated that they have system logs that can be used to compare the statistics while 19% indicated that they perform random sample tests. For most operations, manual, self-reporting tends to be difficult to validate and often inaccurate. It is like asking agents to use activity codes on contacts to indicate what tasks was performed. Some agents are very conscientious and will record each contact with a high degree of accuracy. Others will use the same code on nearly every contact, or not report anything. It is often most accurate to identify the conscientious agents and ask only them to do the reporting and use it as a statistically valid sample for the rest. The responses in the 2014 survey were very similar.
Respondents were asked how they measure adherence to the planned schedules. Over half use a vendor-provided WFM system for this task. A few use spreadsheets, but 30% do not monitor for adherence. Where the work is done within the contact center environment, and often by agents who also handle phone contacts, schedule adherence may be critical to meeting service goals.
In a pure back office environment, there may not need to be as much emphasis on adherence to the details of the schedule but to whether the company received a
day’s work for a day’s pay.
Respondents were asked what factors they use to determine staff effectiveness and they could select more than one choice. Most selected performance scorecard in 2024 and supervisor observation followed by yearly performance reviews. Self-reported productivity measures were the choice of approximately 40 respondents with rework rates and “other” by only a few. Except for the additional survey choice of production scorecard, this does not appear to be much changed from the processes applied in back office environments historically and the results are very similar in the 2014 and 2018 surveys.
Respondents were asked if their inbound phone agents also perform back office tasks and over two-thirds indicated that they do. However, approximately 30% of the respondents indicated that their phone agents do not handle these other types of work in both the 2024 and 2018 surveys. When asked what percentage of the back office work is performed by phone agents, the responses show this is relatively small, with 39% indicating it is 10 percent or less. It is certainly beneficial to have the option to utilize cross-trained personnel to do whatever type of work is needed at any time, but it is more difficult to recruit, train, and manage multi-tasking personnel. The percentage of respondents reporting that their agents handle both types of work increased from 62% in the 2014 survey and remained steady in the 2024 survey.
Inbound Phone Agents Perform Back Office Tasks
Percentage of Back Office for Phone Agents
Based on the responses above, non-phone work is becoming more commonly a role of contact center agents and one of the WFM responsibilities. While the total amount of non-phone work may be small compared to the phone tasks, it is important to both customer satisfaction and ability to offer multiple contact options to the variety of preferences of the customer base. While there does appear to be development of forecasting and scheduling for the personnel who do this work, other management techniques appear to be less sophisticated than those used for tracking call handling personnel performance. There is also some indication that vendor offerings are growing in use in this type of WFM role, but a significant percentage of centers still choose to create their own systems or rely on operational systems and manual processes.
