AI has netted another big win for a technology innovation company — Zendesk. In the era of generative AI and LLMs, missing out on their augmentative capabilities is a major FOMO moment for any organization. Zendesk understands this, and therefore its contact center offerings have evolved to take on the new demands of the call center owners. So, how did it answer to the imposing demands of their customers? By natively building out a software platform that would suit its technology roadmap in the future. Eureka! The future has finally arrived for Zendesk contact center software customers.
Today, Zendesk has acquired Tymeshift. This combination of two market leaders in the customer service software and workforce management software industry respectively could be seen as a game-changer for call centers. Zendesk had been eyeing Tymeshift’s AI product since 2020 when it had first announced a significant investment in WFM, to narrow down on the HR Technology and Contact Center technology offerings. SaaS companies are among the biggest investors in the AI development industry. Most tech companies are trying to build a unique roadmap with Automation and self-service analytics using AI. Zendesk did the same thing with an intention to transform agent experience in the contact centers. Tymeshift’s AI-powered workforce management solution could modernize the entire HR Technology stack for contact centers running on Zendesk.
How?
I will explain.
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What is Workforce Management?
Workforce management (WFM) is the strategic stacking of business processes for communication, collaboration, resource management and productivity tracking. Organizations use WFM solutions to automate a part or whole of an employee-centric business process such as recruitment and hiring, performance management, time scheduling, and task reporting.
A WFM plan should include these activities for meeting employee productivity goals in an organization:
- Time and attendance tracking
- Forecasting, budgeting, and allocation
- Staff scheduling
- Performance management
- Meeting, collaboration, and outsourcing
- Digital communication, including video, tele-calling, and chatbots
- Compliance management
- Document automation and self-service analytics
- Enterprise content management
- Training and learning tools
Why Do Call Centers Need WFM Software?
Every organization aspires to be efficient, productive, and agile in its business process management. Managing employees using technology is an effective and cost-friendly option. Call centers have to do this faster in a tighly controlled framework which involves people, technology, and compliance costs. Building a contact center should be as much about agent experience, as it is about customer experience. And, your best practice should include a sizeable time and effort into selecting a workforce management software.
Why?
As per report, call centers that support and value agent’s contribution at the workplace are more likely to thrive and perform better compared to those that fall short of agents’ expectations. A well-structured WFM assessment should be part of your SOP when you establish a call center and start hiring employees.
Tymeshift is a leading WFM software provider for call centers, a crowded industry that relies on Cloud customer service and communications software providers such as Zendesk, Genesys, NICE, Ring Central, Zoho, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and others.
By adding AI-powered WFM solution to its existing suite, Zendesk has moved few steps ahead in the competition.
Benefits of using Zendesk WFM in Contact Centers
When the stakes are high, organizations need a reliable WFM solution with multi-functional AI-powered capabilities. Remote WFM with AI benefits is one of the main reasons why call centers need Zendesk’s Tymeshift WFM solution. Globally, 75% of HR teams use a workforce management software to track employee activities. However, less than 50% actually have a fully-consolidated HR Technology stack to handle WFM requirements in hybrid and remote workplaces. Tymeshift’s inclusion in Zendesk ecosystem could solve the hiring and staffing problems faced by the contact centers operating in the e-commerce, healthcare, telecom, and mobile entertainment businesses.
Let’s go deeper into this idea.
Workforce Management (WFM), a mission-critical function in any customer-centric organization, continues to be a pain-point for the industries that witness an above-average rate of employee churn every year. With AI, organizations can maximize their organizational productivity and minimize the risks that are associated with the failure to meet the legislation and regulations governing workplace activities. Tymeshift will add a fully-compliant predictive AI-powered forecasting solution into Zendesk’s software. It would automate the way Zendesk data is analyzed to forecast ticket volumes. AI would also highlight the keywords and topical phrases related to the subject matter so that call center managers can quickly identify the areas where agents are falling short of expectations. Predictive intelligence would also forecast the employee sentiments and combine it with the performance data to reliably forecast future staffing needs. AI’s role here is to gain actionable real-time insights on every critical call center interaction to optimize operational costs and to reduce agency churn.
Tymeshift is natively built on Zendesk’s renowned sales CRM and customer service platform. Users can tap Tymeshift’s AI functionalities to build a world-class contact center business model with agility, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness at the core. When agent productivity is dipping due to overwhelming number of calls and inquiries, an AI-powered WFM is the need of the hour for call centers. Automated task creation, allocation, tracking and reporting are in-built within the platform. So, it saves time that is spent in sharing feedback with each agent.
When the pandemic forced global workforce to move to remote-only and later hybrid work models, employers had to quickly invest in WFM solutions for time and attendance management, communications, and performance management. That’s why there has been a significant uptick in the WFM market in the last 3 years. This growth is largely driven by the need to do workforce forecasting, compliance management, scheduling, and a range of other functions. A majority of these functions had to be moved out of the traditional Human Capital Management (HCM) paradigm.
So, what will change at Zendesk with Tymeshift’s arrival?
David Birchmier, Tymeshift’s CEO has been promoted to the role of a Director for WFM Strategy and GTM at Zendesk. At the time of this announcement, David mentioned the importance of leveraging a platform like Zendesk with AI capabilities for providing an immediate data-backed assessment of agent performance without bias.
Zendesk’s commitment to improve customer experience management is now infused into its highly differentiated AI deck, empowering agents and managers with predictive intelligence, data analytics, and automation with unmatched levels of accuracy. It will enter a new era of ‘Intelligent CX’, breaking the barriers in workforce management across globally connected call centers.
Now, with Zendesk, call center managers can plug all the gaps in their systems by automatically tracking agent activities in real time.