Workforce Optimization Is Under Siege

REACHING A CRITICAL JUNCTURE

Contact center WFO revenue decreased by 3.7 percent, from $714.3 million in the first half of 2015 to $688.1 million in the same period of 2016. Contact centers are still buying WFO solutions, but not at the same rate as in the past. A number of factors are slowing down investments in the contact center WFO market, including market confusion caused by the many mergers and acquisitions and the changing composition of the solutions—leading WFO solutions are increasingly embedding analytics, and adoption of these new capabilities is slower than expected.

The contact center WFO market, then, is at a critical juncture. Analytics is playing an increasingly important role throughout WFO suites, as it can provide ample insights into customer needs. Innovative companies appreciate the potential contributions of the new generation of analytically oriented WFO solutions, but are still struggling to fully realize the benefits. Best practices are emerging, but most of the expertise remains with the WFO vendors and has not found its way into end-user companies. When that changes, expect the adoption of analytically oriented WFO solutions to increase.

WFO INNOVATION

In recent years, few new contact center WFO suite or application providers have entered the market. That’s a common scenario with most mature markets, but for the contact center WFO sector, it’s new. The WFO market is hungry for innovation in the form of new technology, capabilities, inventions, concepts, and practices. DMG expects this void to be filled by a new generation of solutions that are going to leave behind the approaches of the past and replace them with new science and practices that will alter and improve contact center performance. At the same time, the new breed of offerings will be designed to address the needs of back-office and branch environments, giving companies enterprise-wide solutions that will enable them to revolutionize the customer journey. WFO has always been an essential productivity tool for contact centers, but the new generation of solutions will be designed to integrate into the routing process and engines, allowing companies to improve the customer experience, reduce operating costs, and better engage their employees.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR WFO

Market consolidation and the resulting slowdown was expected in the WFO market; it’s part of the natural course that IT sectors take as they mature. The question is what comes next. Is this the beginning of the end of the WFO market, or the dawn of something new? DMG believes that the contact center WFO market will experience a renaissance after it goes through a couple of years of clean-up. Companies need the functionality offered by WFO vendors; they need the traditional tools that give them visibility into staff performance, that can help their employees improve. They also need analytically oriented WFO applications that give them understanding and insights into their customers’ needs. Adoption of the new generation of WFO solutions is under way and it is expected to take at least five years before the most basic of these solutions, analytics-­enabled QA, becomes an industry standard. As this occurs, there will be substantial improvements in the analytics capabilities of WFO solutions, which will finally become true suites. Next, WFO will evolve from a suite to an employee and customer framework. This is the future of the market.

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Donna Fluss is president of DMG Consulting LLC. For more than two decades she has helped emerging and established companies develop and deliver outstanding customer experiences. A recognized visionary author and speaker, Fluss drives strategic transformation and innovation throughout the service industry. She provides strategic and practical counsel for enterprises, solution providers, and the investment community.

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