In the past year, 55% of organizations added Workforce Optimization (WFO) applications to their portfolios, and 79% specifically cite workforce management tools as essential to helping them manage remote teams during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Metrigy’s CX and Workforce Optimization: 2021-22 research study of 524 companies globally.
A driving force behind the growth in adoption is WFO’s ability to deliver measurable value to companies that want to improve agent and customer experiences, while making contact center operations more efficient.
WFO comprises a set of applications, data, and analytics to continuously improve the efficiency of the contact center staff and overall operations. Tools in this category include quality management, call/screen recording, Voice of the Customer survey platforms, analytics (agent, desktop, predictive, sentiment, and speech), performance management, and workforce management.
Avaya’s Workforce Optimization suite includes call/screen recording, quality management, workforce management, speech analytics, desktop analytics, customer feedback, and encryption, and more.
Measuring Success
In our study, organizations uncovered changes to their business metrics when they used WFO applications. Those in the top half of at least two of the following metrics were placed in our research success group:
- Revenue increased by at least 41.7%
- Costs decreased by at least 3.1%
- Customer ratings improved by at least 54%
- Employee satisfaction improved by at least 62.7%
- Agent productivity improved by at least 46.6%
We also asked research participants to rate their WFO providers using a 1-to-4 scale, where 4 = Excellent, 3 = Good, 2 = Just OK, and 1 = Poor.
They rated their providers in the following areas:
- Technical features of the service
- Response time to problems and questions
- Reliability of the service
- Effectiveness at improving agent experience
- Ability to help with your CX initiatives
- Analytics capabilities
- AI capabilities
Identifying Top Providers
Metrigy relies on real-world results provided by companies that are actually using the technologies tracked in our MetriStar program. We ask them to evaluate their providers based on both business success metrics and customer ratings, allowing us to identify providers that are delivering across the board. Essentially, they help customers improve their business metrics through the use of their products and services. And, their overall sentiment is high compared to competitors.
We issue a MetriStar Top Provider award to those vendors who achieve success in both business success and customer sentiment. Avaya won a MetriStar Top Provider for Workforce Optimization 2021. A total of 60% of Avaya’s customers were in the research success group.
Avaya’s customers reported a 7.5% decrease in operational costs—more than two times the average change in operational costs in the study. Avaya customers also reported a 51.1% improvement in agent efficiency, compared to the average of 46.6% in the study at large.
Companies use analytics to improve agent performance to reduce Call Handle Time, while simultaneously improving First Call Resolution—a combination that reduces improves overall agent productivity and reduces operational costs. In addition, they are leveraging workforce management to optimize scheduling to reduce staffing costs during slower times.
Additionally, Avaya customers saw a 33.7% increase in revenue, a 50.3% improvement in customer ratings, and a 59.7% improvement in employee satisfaction.
Avaya’s overall customer sentiment score was 3.25, with its highest-scoring areas technical features (3.35), response time to problems/questions (3.32), and analytics capabilities (3.30).
Analytics are such a key area of customer success. By providing a variety of analytics tools (agent, desktop, sentiment, etc.) to measure agent performance, as well as customer satisfaction, supervisors can take action to address problems quickly. Given how rapid WFO tools are changing and improving, Avaya’s ability to quickly respond to problems and questions is crucial to keeping CSAT scores high and agent turnover low.
