NICE has unveiled a suite of advanced workforce management (WFM) capabilities designed to streamline the integration of front and back-office workstreams in the digital era. Central to these new capabilities are Inventory Insights and True-To-Interval (TTI), which merge omnichannel, contact centre, and back office operations into a unified planning interval. This innovation aims to reveal cross-department efficiencies to enhance bottom-line performance.
NICE's newly introduced TTI and Inventory Insights address the complexities of managing customer experience (CX) workforces. By integrating these previously siloed operations, organisations can handle the increasing interaction complexity prevalent in customer-facing and non-customer-facing tasks. This holistic approach is seen as the optimal strategy for managing CX workforces today.
A survey conducted by DMG Consulting, titled "2024 Contact Center and AI Goals and Investment Priorities," identified the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance CX as one of the top three priorities for business leaders. Specifically, integrating contact centre and back office operations is noted as a critical area for achieving this goal. Efficient back-office operations are crucial for overall contact centre effectiveness as they manage essential tasks such as processing orders and payments. Streamlined back-office functions contribute to reduced interaction volumes by preemptively resolving issues before customers need to make contact.
NICE's TTI solution caters to the unique demands of digital channels, offering transformative forecasting and planning capabilities. It enhances staffing accuracy by accounting for the specific time requirements of various interaction types and dynamically adjusting staffing levels to meet the needs of digital and asynchronous interactions. Combined with Inventory Insights, the TTI capability further advances NICE's WFM solutions by deconstructing back-office tasks into a common planning interval. This enables more efficient staff planning and scheduling for both contact centre and back-office employees.
The back office, composed of administration and support personnel who are not client-facing, handles functions such as settlements, clearances, record maintenance, regulatory compliance, and accounting. By integrating these operations with customer-facing tasks, organisations can achieve significant efficiencies and improved CX outcomes.
Barry Cooper, President of NICE's CX Division, commented on the company's leadership in CX solutions: "In the early 2000s, NICE led the market with skills-based routing. Two decades later, NICE continues to lead with innovations like TTI, which helps organisations effectively manage front and back office operations in the digital era. Organisations have expressed a critical need to merge back-office functions with CX operations. We've not only met that need but have also expanded the benefits of our Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) solutions to the back office."
Donna Fluss, President of DMG Consulting, highlighted the evolving needs of modern contact centres: "It's evident that the old ways of doing business are over. While phone calls continue to play a role, WFM solutions must evolve to address the increasing complexity in contact centres, back offices, and other operational environments. The requirements of 21st-century contact centres differ significantly from those of previous generations. WFM vendors are modernising their applications to provide enterprises with the necessary functionality to deliver exemplary CX."
NICE's latest advancements underscore the company's ongoing commitment to driving innovation in the realm of customer experience management. By leveraging AI and advanced WFM capabilities, NICE aims to empower organisations globally to enhance their customer interactions and achieve their business objectives.
