Staffing for Tickets is Less Effective Than You Think

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Workforce management (WFM) solutions form an integral part of a contact center administrator’s day, helping them manage the complex process of staffing their contact center.

But at the end of the day, your WFM solution can only be as accurate as the data you use to power it.

And because ticket-based customer support platforms provide an inaccurate picture of the amount of work that is done or needs to get done, the reality is that your forecasting is a lot less accurate than it should be.

Why customer-centric data is more accurate than ticket-centric

Suppose a longtime customer of yours, Kara, writes an email about a size exchange for a dress.

Shortly after the first email, she sends another email requesting help to return a pair of shoes.

Immediately after that, she decides it would be much easier to call, so she does.

There’s a stark difference in how this scenario would be handled in a ticket-based world, versus a customer-based one, that ultimately affects the accuracy of your forecasting.

WHY GLADLY

Brands are switching from Zendesk's ticket-based platform to Gladly.

Brand Comparison

It Prevents Overstaffing Due to Agent Collision 

With a ticket-based system, each time Kara reaches out creates a different ticket, that would likely be assigned to three different agents.

In comparison, a customer-centric approach, like Gladly, would combine all three communications from Kara (i.e. the two emails and the phone call) into a single conversation which is then assigned, as a whole, to a single agent to answer in one go.

When 3 different agents are handling 3 different tickets, you’re effectively tripling the time it would take the one agent to handle all 3 questions in one go—that’s three agents having to read the customer’s email (or gather information from the phone call), provide three separate responses, and take any follow-up action needed (eg. checking with the warehouse team for inventory).

That inflates the amount of work your contact center typically sees, and the time taken to resolve it, which leads to overstaffing when entered into your WFM solution.

Wondering how Gladly stacks up against ticket-based CX platforms? Start here.

• Zendesk and Gladly Comparison
• Gorgias and Gladly Comparison
• Genesys and Gladly Comparison

It Tracks Concurrent and Cross-Channel Work More Accurately

Today’s customer doesn’t restrain themselves to one channel—they may call you while in line at the grocery store, and send an email on the way to the car, or maybe even send a text while they’re chatting live with an agent.

And the same goes for your agents too—they might be helping a customer on text, while helping two others over chat, all at the same time.

Ticket-based platforms don’t accurately track when an agent responds to multiple customers at the same time, making it hard to staff a multi-channel, efficient contact center. But a ticket-based approach doesn’t account for this kind of multi-channel (or even simultaneous channel) usage, which makes it near impossible to staff a multi-channel contact center accurately.

The difference with Gladly, however, is that we’re able to track every second an agent spends resolving a customer’s inquiry, for every single channel, from voice to email to messaging.

Gladly tracks every second an agent spends resolving a customer’s inquiry—including follow up and after call work—for every single channel. This includes monitoring the time agents spend taking notes after a phone call or the time spent creating a task for Tom over in inventory to help your customer with a shoe size exchange. Even the time an agent spends reviewing the customer’s profile or recapping previous conversations for additional insight and context is also considered.

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No more tickets: Shifting to customer-based CX software

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At the end of the day, your WFM solution is only as good as the data you use to power it, so knowing exactly how much time and effort your agents spend supporting your customer is imperative for an accurate forecast. And since Gladly has every channel natively built-in, you’re able to access cross-channel metrics that allow you to staff for a true, multi-channel customer experience.

Gladly makes it easy to use customer-centric data

Now you may be asking yourself; will this work with the WFM solution I’m using today? Will my current solution be able to make sense of customer-centric data?

The answer is, yes.

Gladly provides both historical and real-time information to ensure your WFM solution has all the information it needs for forecasting, staffing, intraday management, and schedule adherence.

On top of that, accessing Gladly’s customer-centric data is easy and available in a number of different ways. So whether you’re using a commercial WFM software, or your own homegrown spreadsheet, we can support it with our out-of-the-box WFM integrations, WFM APIs, in-application reports and downloadable CSV files.

[Read more: Change Management for Transitioning Support Platforms]

WFM Integrations with Gladly

With Gladly, a customer-centric service platform, you can enjoy the following benefits of seamless integrations with leading workforce management software providers like Calabrio and Agyle Time:

• Effortlessly schedule and manage your team, ensuring accurate volume forecasts.
• Gain real-time agent adherence monitoring to keep your team on track and maintain productivity.
• Match the right agent with the right customer at the right time, enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction.
• Streamline your workforce management processes for maximum productivity.
• Deliver exceptional service at every step, optimizing operations and prioritizing customer needs.

See more about how Gladly can work with your WFM solution to help you staff more accurately, and save you money.