What is Workforce Engagement (WEM)?
Workforce Engagement (WEM) is an approach for increasing contact center agent engagement. The activities associated with WEM include hiring, onboarding, training, scheduling, developing, motivating, and more. In the context of software capabilities, WEM is comprised of workforce management, quality management, call recording, and performance management tools. The activities and software tools associated with WEM were previously associated with workforce optimization (WFO). However, in recent years, the contact center industry has shifted its focus from optimizing labor productivity and managing labor costs – which was typically the focus of WFO – to a more employee-centric focus in order to engage agents throughout the employment life cycle. WEM still includes a labor management component, but the older WFO model has been expanded so that WEM increases the focus on performance and quality management.
This shift has been driven by various factors. First, evidence clearly indicates that agent engagement has a direct and powerful impact on the customer experience, driving an industry consensus that improving agent work experiences will benefit both the agent and the customer. Second, the contact center industry has long been plagued with high agent turnover rates. Couple these already high turnover rates with changing agent demographics and younger generations’ propensity to change jobs more frequently than their predecessors and you have a recipe for epic retention issues. Not only does high turnover impact the customer experience, but it also directly impacts the contact center’s bottom line.
While implementing a WEM strategy may seem daunting, today’s technology can make your agent engagement efforts easier, more efficient, and more sustainable. Doing so will reap huge benefits for the contact center and the entire organization!
How NICE can help
NICE CXone is the market leading contact center software in use by thousands of customers of all sizes around the world. CXone is a cloud native, unified suite of applications designed to help a company holistically run its contact (or call) center operations. CXone includes:
Omnichannel Routing – routing and interaction management. These solutions include an automatic call distributor (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), interaction channel support and proactive outbound dialer.
Workforce Engagement – unlocks the potential of your team. These solutions include workforce management (WFM), quality management (QM), recording and performance management (PM).
Analytics – turns insights into results by making data relevant, easy to consume and actionable. These solutions include interaction analytics, customer surveys, reporting and performance management.
Automation & Artificial Intelligence (AI) – leading-edge, intuitive technology that eliminates mundane tasks and speeds resolutions of customer issues for better business outcomes. It provides self-service, agent-assisted and fully automated alerts and actions.
CXone also includes pre-defined CRM integrations and UCaaS integrations with most leading solutions on the market. These integrations provide a holistic contact center software solution capable of elevating customer experiences for companies of all sizes.
