The News: Zoom has introduced Workforce Engagement Management into its contact center offering. The solution set includes both Workforce Management and Quality Management and is now generally available for its contact center customers. More information about this enhancement can be found on the Zoom website.
Workforce Engagement Management Is Added to Zoom’s Contact Center
Analyst Take: Zoom’s contact center as a service (CCaaS) offering has already been fairly well featured with CX-enhancing capabilities such as intelligent self-service and routing; built-in video for screen share, file share, and chat; and a way to connect with back-office experts while in the moment with customers. For the back office, contact center analytics, streamlined workflows, and call routing features help contact center operations.
Zoom has now taken another step toward a more comprehensive solution with the launch of its Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) solution. This introduction offers many features to help improve agent experience and, in turn, support positive customer interaction.
According to Kentis Gopalla, head of Workforce Engagement Management and product ecosystem for Zoom Contact Center, “Zoom Workforce Engagement Management suite removes the need for multiple vendors to help customer experience and support leaders streamline contact center operations and transform their customer experience, all on one platform.”
Quality Management Supports Streamlined Call Review and Identification of Coaching and Learning Opportunities
Both the Zoom Workforce Management and Zoom Quality Management solutions offer ways to support agents. The Quality Management capabilities that can now be integrated into Zoom Contact Center leverage AI to:
- Provide summarization capabilities via recording, transcribing, and summarizing interactions, freeing employees from manual tasks.
- Score interaction quality, including looking at post-call analytics to focus on the critical moments where an interaction went well or poorly.
- Identify areas of improvement. Using AI-driven speech analytics, agents and managers can determine trends and areas where coaching and other learning opportunities might be beneficial. Agent summaries can be produced and key performance indicators (KPIs) reviewed.
Decreased Administrative Tasks and Easier Scheduling
The new Workforce Management solution focuses on ways to take the pain out of tedious tasks such as forecasting, scheduling, and general management. AI is used in forecasting to make sure the right agents are being used at the right time. This approach helps to ensure customers are not encountering long wait times and helps to prevent agent burnout.
Scheduling capabilities provide more automation. Forecasted data is taken in and allows for a broad view of agent status to optimize and create schedules that can be recurring yet still adjustable. Scheduling is an enormous pain point both for managers and agents. Like all employees, agents are looking for more flexibility and ownership of their schedule, and the solution offers the ability to support this flexibility.
It is important for Zoom to keep pace with competitive offerings from other CCaaS providers, and the addition of Workforce Engagement Management and Quality Management is a solid step as those features are commonplace in the CCaaS space. These features also help to give a broader option to companies who want contact center capabilities all in one solution.
Keep the Agent Top of Mind
As companies roll out these contact center technologies, it is important to keep the agent as a top consideration. Workforce management and quality management solutions have the awkward position of straddling the line between being the power behind productivity, efficiencies, and operational cost savings and providing support to agents. These solutions can sometimes be construed as micromanagement or as a view into “what is going wrong” with an agent. Appropriate change management must be done alongside these technology implementations with strong communication about what will make an agent’s job easier, how their performance will be supported via training (with an eye toward career growth), and how scheduling will be easier.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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