You may be hearing quite a bit about "workforce optimization" really. Considering the speed at which industry buzzwords fly over our heads nowadays, it may have slid by without your noticing. This one, unlike a lot of other terms, is a good one. It's a term that's likely to be around for a long time to come.

What is it? It's essentially a merger of several industries. It's the umbrella under which workforce management; call recording, monitoring and analytics; field sales processes; sales force automation; e-learning; and performance management all reside. To those of you who, like me, always felt that it made little sense to keep call recording and agent monitoring separate from workforce management, not to mention training, salesforce automation and analytics, this is an important market segment that will reach into almost every business on the planet, regardless of size.

In the July issue of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, you'll find an article authored by Witness Systems' Oscar Alban, the company's principal global market consultant. In it, he states that, "Some may elect to define WFO as “utopia,” but at its core it’s simply the convergence of four key contact center technology segments that work optimally together in support of a greater customer service strategy. Simply said, it unites the following: 

Workforce management. Strategic forecasting and scheduling that drives efficiency and adherence, aids in planning and helps facilitate optimum staffing and service levels;

Performance management. Key performance indicators (KPIs) and scorecards that analyze and help identify synergies, opportunities and improvement areas; and

E-learning. Training, new information and protocol disseminated to staff, leverages best-practice customer interactions and delivers learning to support development."

The July issue of CIS will be with print subscribers by mid-July.

TES