Workforce engagement management (WEM) is a specific approach to managing call center performance. It goes beyond call center training, hiring new coaches, and employing new software; it's giving your employees the tools they need to succeed and crafting workflows so they can focus on what they do best.
But what can you do to improve your workforce engagement management? We've laid the groundwork for successful WEM in your organization, including programs to invest in and the components for WEM success.
Looking to improve your team's workflow without learning a new process? Check out Hooked CRM, a dialer, customer relationship management software, and an AI assistant in one program. Book a demo with us today to talk to a representative.
What is Workforce Engagement Management?
Workforce Engagement Management (or WEM) is an approach to managing call center employee performance. It focuses on motivating employees to do their best work, engaging them in their calls, and developing their skills so they always feel they are doing their best. The process empowers employees without micromanaging their every step.
This process has become integral to business success and is a pillar of call center solutions.
WEM vs. WFM vs. WFO vs. QM
Workforce engagement management can be confused with a few different acronyms. While they have some similarities, each serves its own purpose within your organization. Here's how you can discern the difference between them:
| Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) | Workforce Management (WM) | Workforce Optimization (WFO) | Quality Management (QM) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A series of tools that are used to manage call center employee performance. | Correctly managing the number of workers to your business's capacity | Combining data, analytics, and employee performance to match skills and capacity. | Specifically focuses on the quality of the employee's performance on the call or call performance. |
Why Invest in Workforce Engagement Management?
Workforce engagement management offers several benefits for your organization and positively impacts your employees. Here are just a few of the reasons why you should invest in WEM for your workplace:
Improved Employee Satisfaction
In any workplace, you must give your employees the tools they need to succeed. When they are given programs that don't clutter their workflow or overcomplicate simple processes, employee satisfaction increases, creating an environment where your call representatives want to improve their skill set.
Empowering your employees also increases retention rates since more satisfied employees want to stay where they feel they can succeed.
Easier Coaching, Training & Onboarding
When you employ workforce engagement management, it's easier to see what a call representative or agent can improve. With a combination of quality assurance checks, AI assistance, and call analysis software, managers and administrators can easily identify which areas need improvement.
In turn, that makes initial training for your call center representatives easier. The streamlined process can preemptively emphasize the areas new employees need to focus on before they create bad habits. It should be at the center of your call center training.
Increased Productivity
After identifying your team's pain points, you can address them and fill the gaps to increase productivity. With workforce engagement management, business success metrics can be measured. With a proper workflow and AI integration, you can evaluate and correct processes before critical moments are missed.
More Satisfied Customers
Workforce engagement management doesn't just impact your employees; it impacts your customers. Your employees are representatives of you and your company, so when they are striving to improve themselves, your customers will notice a difference.
Keys to Workforce Engagement Management for Call Centers
Interested in starting workforce engagement management for your call center? There are a few elements that every good WEM uses. Here's what you should prioritize if you're thinking about a new process for your WEM:
Workforce Management
Workforce management is similar to WEM in that it helps streamline your workflow process. However, instead of focusing on employee engagement, it directly impacts the process itself and primarily focuses on the CRM integration you're using.
A CRM assists with scheduling, goal management, and suggestions for future interactions to improve the odds of success. These are all critical to ensuring your call center hits goals — whether that be making sales or scheduling appointments.
AI Virtual Assistants
An AI virtual assistant is a digital partner that assists in administrative or repetitive tasks for your call representatives. These assistants work in the background, answering your employees' questions and accurately summarizing calls.
A good AI assistant should seamlessly flow with your agents and provide suggestions at the optimal time. At Hooked, we've created a series of AI assistants we call 'Tacklebox AI'. Tacklebox AI can create reports, offer live suggestions, generate live transcriptions, and more. Book a demo with us today to learn more about what Tacklebox AI can do for you and your business.
Quality Assurance Checks
Keeping your calls efficient is important, but it's equally important to ensure your representatives aren't skipping their quality assurance phrases. Whether you're concerned about HIPAA regulations or protecting your customers' PII, quality assurance should never be skipped. Integrating your current dialer with a quality assurance program can help prompt your agents with the right phrase, solving this issue for you and your agents.
Performance Metrics & Opportunities for Coaching
A key tenet of workforce engagement management is the performance metrics you can obtain from your calls. Amount of sales, call duration, number of daily calls… These are just a few of the metrics you should track to evaluate your team's performance.
If you notice any gaps or irregularities in performance metrics during an audit, it creates opportunities for your call center training and coaching. However, without a proper evaluation of these metrics, you'll be shooting in the dark to determine what changes are needed.
What Software Will You Need for Workforce Engagement Management?
While you can do all these checks manually, if you have multiple employees or metrics to track, you can drown in menial tasks instead of improving your productivity. That's why employing this kind of software to evaluate your reports is important.
Here's what we recommend picking up to expedite your workforce engagement management without sacrificing quality:
Voice Recording & Summarization
If you're working in a call center, you should always have voice recording turned on by default. This keeps your call representatives accountable and provides a reference point for your future coaching.
More helpful than raw audio or transcription, an accurate summary of the conversation speeds the process. You won't have to spend hours listening to conversations or picking call recordings based on the representative's recollection.
Performance Management Software
With performance management software, you can upload your phone conversations and summaries, and it'll provide actionable insights to elevate your productivity. This eliminates the need for a tedious evaluation of every call to discern the most important and impactful elements.
AI Assist Software
An AI assistant can have many benefits for your call representatives and agents. Depending on the software's capability, it can recall essential information, provide suggestions to your agents, and give detailed reports. However, this depends on which program you choose to integrate into your system.
Workforce Engagement Management for Small Teams
For the most part, small businesses will want a workforce engagement management system to coincide with their workflow. Typically, with small businesses, you won't need the extra WEM features, so you'll want a flexible system that scales with your team.
Should you still invest in a WEM system if you run a small business? Yes, investing in a WEM system benefits a small business, especially if you scale up to include more employees or clients.
How AI Changes Workforce Engagement Management
AI workforce engagement management helps automate the WEM loop. With an AI integration in your WEM, many processes can be automated. Here are a few different places where AI can automate your workflow:
- Conversation Transcription
- Disposition Confirmation
- AI Note Generation
- Customer Sentiment Analysis
Of course, this depends on your own workflow, so always ask questions about their AI assistance when you book a demo with potential customers.
How Hooked CRM Can Assist in Your Workforce Engagement Management
Hooked CRM is an all-in-one program: dialer, CRM, and AI assistant. With Hooked, you won't have to switch between products or upload the same information repeatedly. It provides everything you need on one convenient platform.
Our custom AI solution, Tacklebox AI, can enhance your and your representatives' lives. It combines live transcription, live AI assist, note generation and summarization, lead data extraction, event scheduling, instant reporting and answers, disposition confirmation, and more.
These functions were designed to assist your process without overcomplicating it. If you're interested in our product, book a demo with us! We would love to talk to you about how you can simplify your system or provide a deeper breakdown of our AI, dialer, and CRM functions.
Conclusion
Workforce Engagement Management is the future of call center maintenance. By providing your team the proper tools, you can elevate their performance and the opportunities they need to improve. By integrating AI tools, performance metrics, and quality assurance checks, you can ensure your team performs at its best.
At Hooked, we'd like to be a part of your story by providing those tools. If you're unsure how Hooked works with your current process, fill out a quick survey, and we will get back to you as soon as possible. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
