Aspect Software has released Aspect Active Assignment, a SaaS-based real-time agent workforce management solution aimed at maximizing agent idle time.
The solution provides optimal intraday staffing and task management decisions are being made in real-time resulting in higher employee performance and labor savings, without sacrificing customer experience levels, the company said.
"Workforce management systems have been used for many years to predict and manage agent staffing in contact centers, but hour-to-hour variations in call volumes still exist. This variability can cause contact centers to experience significant periods of agent idle time," said John Amein, vice president of product management, Aspect. "Using that idle time requires real-time information that both identifies gaps and makes management adjustments. Using a real-time decision engine, Aspect Active Assignment continually monitors key contact center metrics such as queue and agent statistics and applies next-best-action rules that intelligently and automatically make adjustments in scheduled training, workflow routing and staffing levels."
For example, contact center agents frequently complete training courses which divert time away from handling customer interactions. Aspect Active Assignment identifies idle times between customer interactions and is able to adjust staffing plans in real-time while introducing assigned activities including training into an agent's intraday schedule. The result is a workforce with increased productivity, performance and profitability without manual intervention.
Key capabilities of Aspect Active Assignment include:
- Real-time response - Manages workforce by making automated, optimal adjustments that track volumes in real-time.
- Unproductive idle time converted to active productive work time - Extracts useful time from many short intervals of idle time with no degradation of customer experience or increase in cost.
- Training delivered as soon as possible - Monitors service levels per queue in real-time and delivers training or other tasks to agents by dynamically removing them from the queue if call volumes fall below a pre-defined level.
- Distribute back office work - Finds the time to complete back office work and prompts the right agent to begin their assigned work when call volumes decline to a pre-determined level.
- Communication channel monitoring and balancing - Redirects staff to other customer channels based on real-time demand in each channel.
"With Active Assignment, Aspect delivers the holy grail of workforce management -- real-time automated staffing adjustments and automated assignment of agent activities such as training during periods of low call volume," said Paul Stockford, chief analyst, Saddletree Research, in a statement. "By removing the efficiency drag and potential for human error that typically occurs during unexpected call volume fluctuations, Aspect Active Assignment delivers productivity gains that will positively impact the bottom line in terms of both time management and customer satisfaction."