Welcome back to Ask Aspect, a series where we sit down with our in-house industry experts to gather insights from their endless workforce experience. We’ve talked about what AI really means in contact centers with Colin Whelan and explored the complexities of workforce management with Alec Bowman-Clarke.
Today, we’re chatting with Mary Ward, an Aspect veteran. Mary has been with the company since 1998 and has gathered a wealth of workforce industry knowledge across several departments, leading customer engagement, training, tech support, and inside sales efforts. In recent years, Mary has moved into a new role, Strategic Manager of Solutions Architects. As a leader on the Solutions Architects team, she works with existing customers to foster adoption across their workforce and find customized software solutions to each organization’s unique challenges.
We took some time to chat with Mary about her thoughts on hot topics in the WEM world as of late. Some answers may be edited for clarity but you’re still getting the expert insights you’re looking for.
Q: So Mary, you’ve been helping Aspect customers for a long time. What are some of the biggest pain points WEM customers are aiming to address?
A: Scheduling is one of the biggest problem areas. Making it easier for the agent to schedule is something workforce professionals have wanted for a long time. Actually making scheduling processes easier for the agent, eliminating unnecessary and complex steps that they may not understand. That’s what we’re doing that with our new employee experience tool, making scheduling more flexible and true self-service possible for the agent.
Another big pain point that’s on our radar is forecasting. Customers want choices about how forecasts should be created and what algorithms should be used, without having to take data outside of the Aspect platform. Users want to be able to keep data within the system, run different algorithms, and get a better understanding of how things like attrition and training impact their contact center.
Q: Let’s talk about the new Aspect Workforce Experience. How do you think this new tool will address some pain points?
A: When I started on the help desk, I had three months of training where we learned every bit of the software, every piece inside and out. So I was an expert after those three months, but that’s long time to become an expert. In today's world we just don’t have that sort of time - you're expected to kind of get in and be an expert within a few weeks.
Workforce Experience is simplifying the world of Workforce Management to solve the complex problems that are required in the world of scheduling with an innovative approach and intuitive design.
Q: What changes have you seen over time in industry buzzwords and trends?
A: No matter what the buzzword or trend is, the main directive of contact centers is to keep employees happy, keep customers happy, and do this at a lower cost. Contact centers have large groups of employees to manage while trying to solve complex business problems. So it doesn't really matter the buzzword that goes along with it. The problems are all essentially the same. Trends like AI are trying to answer the need for more automation and more dynamic, real-time functionality. We have to ask bigger questions like “What what are the customer pain points? What problems are they trying to solve? What are the things that are actually taking customers time that can improved with modern technology?”
Q: What innovation would be a game changer in WEM?
A: A solution that could account for the full life cycle of the agent, from hiring though training, and including that in the forecasting plan. Most WEM solutions require planners to go outside the system to assess these factors when forecasting. This kind of gets back into the realm of AI and using automation, to make these processes less of a challenge.
When we talk about innovation, it’s important to think about how people interact with contact centers. It’ll be different in 10-20 years, there are different generations. I’d rather still pick up the phone and call to resolve a problem, but I've been in contact centers for over a quarter of a century. I think it's important to pay attention to that and how there are shifts in the way people are interacting with technology. Innovation has to meet those people where they are today and where we’ll be in the future.
Q: You’ve been with Aspect for a long time, what’s one of our greatest strengths?
A: We have really good products, we really do. We have robust products that solve customers’ business problems in many different ways. We have flexibility and variety that scales with businesses when they need it. We also have wonderful people on the team that want to help customers and see them succeed. We’ve valued customer obsession for as long as I’ve been here.
Want to gather more insights from our team of in-house experts? Stay tuned for the next installment of Ask Aspect. In the meantime, contact our team today to learn more about how our team can support workforce management efforts in your contact center.
