"... SCHEDULE BIDS ARE USUALLY NOT ON THE TABLE WITH BACK OFFICE GROUPS BECAUSE FREQUENT ROTA- TIONS MAY NOT BE EASILY TOLERATED BY THAT GROUP OF WORKERS."
BACK OFFICE WFM
I raised my hand, drove to Nashville, Tenn. and began learning TCS in a crowded room above a hibachi restaurant. I quickly found I was good at this work, especially forecasting. I love forecasting!
LET’ S SET THE STAGE. DO THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BACK OFFICE, ALSO OPERATIONS MATTERS LIKE STAFF AVAILABILITY, AFFECT THE CONTACT CENTER AND IF SO, HOW?
A: Schedule adherence might be completely out of the picture because it may not be necessary. But when the back office gets backed up that can trigger new phone calls from people checking in for status updates, and that is a circular relationship between both groups.
IS STAFF FORECASTING AND SCHEDULE GENERATION FOR BACK OFFICE WORK I. E., WFM, DIFFERENT THAN THAT FOR THE CONTACT CENTER? DOES THE BACK OFFICE USE WFM SYSTEMS AND ARE THERE ANY SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS?
A: Forecasting in back office is complicated by work that spans multiple days / hours. When there is down time because a request is in a pending status, that can be tricky for traditional WFM systems.
One solution is to decouple the forecast using a time-shift operator for lead times, then breaking down the work between its arrival date versus its completed date. To really get it right, the carry-over volume must be incorporated to make sure you’ re covering any backlogs that are in play.
There are areas with back office WFM that are easier than with contact center WFM. For example, schedule bids are usually not on the table with back office groups because frequent rotations may not be easily tolerated by that group of workers.
Moreover, lunch and break optimizations are only necessary when there’ s a full coverage model requirement, meaning the services require replies within seconds or minutes, not hours / days.
Another perk for back office scheduling is the paid time off( PTO) approval process might be way more lenient because of less restrictions on the number of people off at the same time.
This also makes it much easier to plan for events that include all employees, like team meetings or seasonal celebrations, because you don’ t have to worry about keeping someone behind to cover the phones while everyone is away.
DO YOU MEASURE BACK OFFICE WORK? IS IT DIFFERENT COMPARED WITH CONTACT CENTER WORK?
A: In terms of how quickly things are getting handled, phone work and chat( front office) are usually measured by average speed of answer( ASA), service level( SL), and abandonment rate.
Back office work does not require the same level of urgency, and I measure it using a response time goal.
For example, calculating the required staff for off-phone activity that has a three-day time-to-process goal doesn’ t fit in the ASA or SL metric calculation, so the solution to this is response time. The formula is easy enough: volume divided by( response time divided by AHT).
The trick is remembering to convert the response time to the same FTE hours in a day. So, if the goal is three days, and a full-time employee works eight hours a day, the response time is 24( 8 x 3 = 24). If the volume is 50, and the handle time is 1.5 hours, the entire formula is:
50 ÷ 24 ÷ 1.5 = 3 PEOPLE
"... SCHEDULE BIDS ARE USUALLY NOT ON THE TABLE WITH BACK OFFICE GROUPS BECAUSE FREQUENT ROTA- TIONS MAY NOT BE EASILY TOLERATED BY THAT GROUP OF WORKERS."
-- TIFFANY LAREAU
All methods use handle times and volume, but front office work also uses an Erlang calculator that includes extra time for people that will need to be in the idle state, waiting on the next customer, which is required to meet ASA and SL goals. This becomes the inverse of the utilization / occupancy factor.
WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE POTENTIAL PITFALLS AND RED FLAGS IN WFM FOR THE BACK OFFICE?
A: A lack of available reports is common; time trial studies can help with that, especially if you’ re starting from ground zero.
Many back office work groups do not have long term staffing models( capacity plans). One reason for this is because they attribute that kind of thing to“ call centers” and don’ t feel they are a call center.
But back offices can still benefit from a weekly long term plan because they still have seasonal volume, attrition, and they experience irregular planned time off.
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