Cost- per -contact should be metric that should be used by customer contact centers'  to judge efficiency .Skill- based routing(SBR) can directly connect the caller to the agent reducing time taken per call. Average abandon time (ABT) can be used as a metric also. Workforce management tools forecast the amount of calls in the future and agents' work schedule throughout the day. Workforce Intelligence deals with division of agents according to their specialization in terms of skills so that lesser time and cost are spent. Last but not the least self-service options would benefit in terms operational efficiency and overall customer satisfaction.Read more at: http://www.incontact.com/blog/reduce-cost-per-contact-5-tips/

Workforce management is needed in every company and is very important for contact center success. A contact center is at risk of losing revenue if there is no workforce management. But, in spite of this, there are still confusions that discourage companies from investing in a quality workforce management solution. Bob Webb (VP Sales) writes in his article about some common myths about workforce management. They are: Workforce management is an ancillary application; all workforce management solutions are the same with algorithms that can produce a statistically valid forecast; only large centers benefit from Workforce Management - WFM is cost prohibitive for small centers; internal productivity metrics cannot tie in with workforce management tools; supervisors lose control of at-home agents; and customer data is at risk with hosted solutions. Read more at: http://www.callcentertimes.com/Home/tabid/37/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/395/CategoryID/1/NewsID/1027/Default.aspx