Podcast

KPIs in Workforce Management: What are they and why do they matter?

André Leitão, co-founder, CEO, and podcast host at weWFM, sits down with WFM expert Chris Dealy to explore the importance of KPIs and how measuring the right KPIs can transform your contact center operations.

KPIs are the vital signs of your business. They help you track performance, uncover root causes, and improve continuously. From customer experience to planning effectiveness, the right KPIs give you clarity in every corner of your operations.

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Gain a comprehensive understanding of why KPIs matter for your contact center, how to measure them, and what the most important ones are for your business.

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Why are KPIs important for your contact center?

KPIs are the vital signs of your business. The axiom “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” is a reminder that you need to constantly measure these vital signs, so you can track performance against your targets.

How to align KPIs to your unique business goals

Start with a clear picture of your organisation’s values, brand, and goals. They may be in your company’s annual report. They may be in your corporate playbook. But it’s important to find what they are to design KPIs that align with them.

Forecast accuracy for planning effectiveness

when asked how accurate their forecasts are, most people quickly give an answer like “we’re normally 95% accurate”. But when you drill into it, you find that different people measure accuracy in different ways. And some ways are better than others. Measuring forecast accuracy sounds simple but really, there are some pitfalls to watch out for.

How to achieve high forecast accuracy in contact centers

Stop accepting inaccurate forecasts as 'fact-of-life'. Learn to identify common forecasting errors such as improper aggregation of data, ignoring AHT variability etc, and leverage WFM software to address these issue.

Blog: Call center forecasting: 10 mistakes that damage your forecast accuracy

Measuring scheduling efficiency in contact centers

Focusing solely on forecasting accuracy is not enough. If the forecasts are not used as an input to the capacity planning process, or as an input to the scheduling process, then you're not getting the true value out of them.

Beyond tracking performance to driving real improvements

KPIs are meaningless unless you do something meaningful with them. It's important to look at all the data and find ways to improve.

A good technique to use is ‘5 whys’ analysis. It’s worth Googling that. The idea is basically to keep asking ‘why’ until you find the root cause.

Implementing KPI-driven strategies in contact centers

When implementing KPI-driven strategies, it is important to understand your existing process before starting. Look at what is ‘most broken’ and focus on that first.

How is new technnology influencing wfm KPIs

Call volumes are declining and digital channels like live chat and social media are growing. Ironically, the KPIs you need to track for digital channels are pretty much the same as for calls.

eBook: 35 Most relevant KPIs for contact centers

What are other important but lesser known KPIs

The reverse of the axiom ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’ is NOT true: ‘if you can measure it, you should manage it’. Just because you can easily get the data to calculate a KPI, that doesn’t mean you should focus on that KPI. However, there are some lesser-known KPIs that are probably worth exploring

Cheat sheet: 35 Most relevant KPIs for contact centers

About the speakers

André Leitāo

Host

With over 10 years working and studying Workforce Management, his career started by studying to become a Software Developer soon falling in love with the Operations world. André is a strategic planning enthusiast across his career managed WFM for different businesses from Telecommunications, Banking, Retail, Gaming, and E-commerce.

Chris Dealy

Guest

Chris has specialized in WFM for contact centers for over 20 years. He has written countless blog posts, e-books and how-to guides on the subject, and hosted many well-regarded webinars with leading industry experts. Chris has helped dozens of companies to reap the benefits of WFM and he knows the business case inside out.