Workforce Management Terminology: A Comprehensive Guide
Adherence. AHT. ATA. EWT. FCR. The contact center industry is full of specialized terminology, jargon, and acronyms. Whether you’re an experienced contact center leader or a newly hired call center agent, it’s challenging to learn and keep up with the latest workforce management (WFM) terminology. To help you make sense of your work life (or to impress your colleagues at the next happy hour), we’ve curated a comprehensive glossary of the most frequently used and difficult-to-define words.
Before we explore the WFM glossary of terms, we want to give a nod to Call Centre Helper for their excellent list of key industry terms as well, which they describe as the “golden rules of customer service.” We encourage you to use our own WFM glossary of terms to:
- Refresh your own knowledge of the most frequently used terms
- Incorporate into your new agent training content
- Reinforce key terms when providing 1:1 agent feedback
- Update contact center and workforce management target metrics
For Starters, Three Confusing Yet Critical Terms
Let’s unpack some must-know workforce management terminology. First up is to clarify three key phrases that often cause confusion among customer support agents and managers alike — WEM, WFM, and WFO.
- Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) – Software products that bring together Quality Management (QM) and Workforce Management, with a focus on employee engagement and employee productivity.
- Workforce Management (WFM) – The art and science of having the right number of agents available at the right times to service an accurately forecasted volume of incoming customer contacts at the service level standard set by a contact center while minimizing cost. WFM software solutions enable contact center leaders to create the most optimized schedules for their staff, while creating a plan for future staffing forecasts and service goals.
- Workforce Optimization (WFO) – A suite of contact center solutions that focuses on operational efficiency and managing people. WFO evolved into WEM as engagement and experience became more of a priority for businesses.
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With these three primary terms defined, let’s take a look at the key workforce terminology you need to know. We’ve also added a few fun entries to the list to keep you motivated and inspired!
WFM Glossary of Key Terms You Need to Know
Abandonment Rate – The number of customers who abandon the queue after waiting for a given period of time divided by the total number of contacts.
Adherence – The percent of time an agent works on a scheduled task when compared to the total time they are scheduled to work, sometimes called schedule adherence. The time considered in adherence includes activities such as meetings and training, in addition to the channels they are assigned.
After-Call Work (ACW) – The tasks that a call center agent completes after finishing an interaction with a customer, sometimes referred to as post-call processing. These tasks could include sending an email to the customer or internal department to follow up on the call, logging details about the call in a database, and scheduling follow-up actions.
All About the Agents
This next group of key WFM terms defines aspects of contact center agent management.
Agent Engagement – Agent engagement is a term used to discuss how well solutions are engaging agents. This can be done through self-service time off requests, shift change requests, access to performance data, access to learning materials, gamification of goals and/or sharing motivational messages to those who are exhibiting positive behavior.
Agent Escalation – A process for forwarding a customer interaction to a supervisor or a more knowledgeable agent in a contact center to assist the customer with necessary resources.
Agent Experience – The day-to-day reality a contact center agent encounters in their work as they perform the tasks associated with their job, which are in turn shaped by training, technology, supervisors, schedules, customer interactions, and company policies.
Agent Occupancy – The amount of time an agent spends on contact-handling activities as a proportion of total scheduled time. This may exclude time spent on shrinkage activities and is often measured at both a team and agent level. Occupancy is also called utilization rate or agent utilization rate.
Is Your Contact Center Better Than Average?
Next up are the WFM terms that refer to industry, contact center, or agent averages that are critical metrics for contact center leaders.
Average Handle Time (AHT) – The average duration of an entire customer contact interaction from the time the customer initiates it until that interaction is complete and there is contact resolution. For synchronous contacts, this includes hold times, transfers, and after-call work. For example, to calculate average handling time for calls, add total talk time, total hold time and after-call work time, then divide that number by the total number of customer calls.
Average Talk Time (ATT) – The amount of time a contact center agent spends handling customer calls and resolving queries, not to be confused with average handle time which is longer in duration.
Average Time to Abandonment – The average length of time that a caller waits in a queue before they abandon their call, sometimes referred to as average patience.
Average Wait Time (AWT) – This is the average amount of time over a set period that a customer spends waiting to be connected for assistance. AWT is also known as Average Speed of Answer (ASA).
Blended Agent – A multi-skilled agent who handles both incoming and outgoing contacts.
Bot – Actions driven by artificial intelligence that automate portions of the customer journey at an individualized level to help contact center agents do their jobs more efficiently.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) – A method of subcontracting various business operations to third-party vendors, such as a contact center.
Channel – The method of communication customers use to interact with businesses and contact centers. This can be an inbound phone call, email, chatbot, social media, or another method.
Chat – A digital channel for providing customer service, usually enabled via a company’s website or mobile app. Chat is often a synchronous channel, but can be asynchronous depending on the complexity of the customer’s needs.
Cost per Case – The average cost per support contact, which can include fixed costs, such as office space and technology expenses, and variable costs, such as scheduled labor and unscheduled overtime. Sometimes referred to cost per contact.
Digital Experience – A customer’s collective interactions with a company via multiple digital touchpoints, such as a mobile device, social media networks, or a desktop computer.
Dynamic Scheduling – A software-based automated method of forecasting and real-time scheduling for your contact center workforce that leverages dynamic changes and requests for operational efficiency. This takes the place of outdated static scheduling via spreadsheets and other methods.
Erlang C Formula – An equation for calculating the number of agents needed in a contact center, given the number of calls and the desired or target service level.
Forecasting – A prediction of contact center workload and staffing requirements, based on historical data and employee preferences. Workforce management software can provide automatic staffing forecasts and help meet required workloads.
Gamification – An employee experience (EX) strategy that drives motivation and creates a culture where agents continuously work to achieve the business objectives and, in turn, get rewarded and recognized.
Bonus: Get fresh ideas, inspiration, and benefits of incorporating gamification into your contact center.
Handling Time – For voice channels, the combination of talk time and after-call work time. For asynchronous channels, the combination of all time spent working on an interaction until its resolution.
Intraday Management – The process of monitoring the current day’s volumes and trends and making corresponding changes to workforce schedules. Also referred to as intraday activities.
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Key Performance Indicator (KPI) – The most critical performance metrics in a contact center. Are typically measures related to productivity and customer satisfaction.
Load Balancing – The process of balancing contact with customers between multiple sites, queues, types of calls, or agents.
Monitoring – The practice of evaluating an agent’s interactions with customers to assess the quality and ensure a fantastic customer experience.
Net Workload – The amount of time an agent needs to handle a certain amount of work, without accounting for safety staffing, or the practice of providing a safe mental and physical work environment for agents. For example, if 1,000 contacts are processed during a day, with an average handle time of four minutes, the net workload is 4,000 minutes.
Occupancy Rate – The percentage of logged-in and available time that an agent spends in active contact handling, versus total scheduled time.
Omnichannel Customer Experience – The experience a customer has when they engage with a business across individual touchpoints over a variety of contact channels that all seamlessly connect, allowing them to pick up where they left off on one channel and continue the interaction on another.
Peak Hour Traffic (PHT) – The highest volume load of traffic offered to a telecommunications system, sometimes referred to as peak traffic.
Quality Management – The people, processes, and systems a contact center uses to monitor customer interactions to ensure they are being handled by contact center agents in the desired fashion, also known as quality assurance.
Queue Time – The time a customer waits for an agent to become available and handle their request.
Routing – A management feature for contact centers that allows incoming contacts to be placed in a queue and then routed to a specific person or group of people based on business rules and criteria.
Schedule Efficiency – The measurement of how closely scheduled resources match the forecasted number of resources needed.
Service Level Agreement (SLA) – A contact center’s commitment to maintain a certain level of service, typically involving a specified percentage of handled contacts within a period of time.
Shrinkage – The percentage of paid time that contact center agents are not available to handle calls, emails, chats, and other customer interactions after accounting for breaks, meetings, training time, off-phone activities, time off, and other activities.
Transfer Rate – The percentage of customer contacts transferred to another contact center team member in order to be completed or resolved.
Utilization Rate – The percentage of logged-in and available time that an agent spends in active call handling versus in an idle or available state, sometimes referred to as occupancy rate.
Volume – A measure of how many support contacts are coming into a contact center’s channels (e.g., email, chat, phone) within a given period of time, typically represented in increments of a quarter-hour, hour, or day. Also known as contact volume.
Wrap-Up Time – The time an agent requires after a conversation (voice, text, or other) has ended to complete work directly associated with the interaction just completed.
Workload Management – The process of efficiently distributing and managing work across a team of workers with similar or complementary skills.
eXception Handling – The process for managing any activity not planned in an agent’s work schedule, including meetings, training sessions, unscheduled breaks, or absenteeism.
Yes we can! – Your contact center’s perspective on providing ideal schedules for your business and agents by using workforce management software.
Gen Z – The population of customers that dislikes using phone calls for support, finding them too time-consuming and even anxiety-inducing. To resonate with Gen Z customers, contact centers have to take an omnichannel approach and connect their way — mainly via social media and texting apps.
There You Have It — WFM Terminology from A to Z
We invite you to bookmark our full glossary of terms so you can refer to it any time the need arises. If you have any additions to the list, let us know!
Ready to Dive in Deeper?
Is now the right time to implement an AI-driven, cloud-based WFM tool in your contact center? Our free ebook “Workforce Management: Essentials for the Modern Contact Center” can help.
