Welcome to workforce management’s (WFM’s) new era! It’s a tremendous and opportunistic time in which WFM solutions are being used to build employee engagement in contact centers instead of solely being leveraged to boost productivity, as has traditionally been the case.
The market is undergoing a transformation as companies realize that doing business as usual in their contact centers is an impediment to achieving their goal of improving the customer experience (CX) while reducing operating costs.
It’s interesting that the WFM segment’s reawakening follows closely on the heels of the self-service revolution. As more organizations come to accept that even the best self-service applications are not going to eliminate the need for human agents in contact centers (or employees in enterprises), having tools to retain these vital resources while reducing onboarding costs is becoming increasingly important.
Consequently, the WFM market is experiencing a needed wave of investments driving true innovation. Established vendors and recent entrants into the sector are spending more on research and development (R&D) than ever before. They are introducing modules and features designed to address both operating department and employee needs.
A new balanced staffing paradigm is being applied throughout WFM suite and platform components. It is being driven by the overdue recognition that contact center culture and environments must change, as today’s workforce is unwilling to tolerate an inflexible workday.
AI is revamping many aspects of forecasting, scheduling, agent self-service, vacation/time-off management, long-term capacity planning, and even how and when agents receive alerts.
Undoubtedly, newer generations of employees have brought more attention to the issue by their very high attrition rates or unwillingness to accept contact center jobs. However, enterprise executives have known for decades that these departments were difficult places to work, as agent attrition has ranged from 30% to over 100% annually throughout their history.
AI-Driven Innovation
The application of AI across WFM platforms is fueling many enhancements in these necessary, albeit often complex solutions.
The processing power of the cloud enables AI to make previously impossible capabilities a reality. It enhances forecasting for both synchronous and asynchronous interaction types, improving accuracy by giving WFM administrators the flexibility to select the appropriate algorithm for each run.
AI is revamping many aspects of forecasting, scheduling, agent self-service, vacation/time-off management, long-term capacity planning, and even how and when agents receive alerts.
Newly released scheduling modules allow employees to self-select their work hours (instead of fixed shifts), pick their lunch and break times (which may vary by day), make changes when needed (without involving their supervisors or WFM administrators), and a lot more.
Hyper-Personalizing the Employee Experience
Enabled by AI, the market is moving toward hyper-personalizing experiences for employees as well as customers, since what motivates one person may be completely different from what drives another. Some individuals want to select their working hours, others prefer to be assigned fixed shifts so they don’t have to decide, and part of the workforce would like a combination of both approaches.
This level of hyper-personalization wasn’t an option in the past but is now a necessity, as managing their own schedule is one of the most important criteria for multiple generations of employees. But it goes beyond setting work hours, allowing employees to request and schedule their training, coaching, and quality sessions as well.
WFM solutions are evolving...and in many cases they are now delivering functionalities enterprises have long requested.
Robust WFM solutions give agents transparency and visibility into their performance. For example, the solutions enable them to see comparisons relative to their peers (where allowed) and provide them with the ability to insert exceptions when they are out of adherence.
This level of autonomy over scheduling and insights into performance are positioning contact centers to become employers of choice: which was unheard of as recently as a couple of years ago.
Work Rules and Unions
WFM needs vary greatly by country and within each company. In the past, organizations often felt they had no choice but to modify their scheduling methodology to align with the capabilities of their WFM solutions.
While this was never an optimal approach for enterprises, with today’s work rules, regulations, and union requirements, the level of complexity means it is no longer feasible for many businesses to work around a WFM application’s limitations.
During the past couple of years, WFM vendors have vastly improved their solutions’ flexibility to enable users to apply specific work rules and parameters. This is an important change that helps companies better manage complicated workforce and regulatory environments across their businesses and borders.
In some cases, though, this means the vendors, system integrator partners, and companies’ IT staff must find compromises between true department optimization and compliance and employee needs, which can increase projected staffing requirements. However, these changes may be offset by significantly improved forecasts which reduce agent head counts.
New and Expanded Capabilities
WFM solutions are evolving beyond their traditional comfort zones, and in many cases they are now delivering functionalities enterprises have long requested.
During the past 12 - 18 months, WFM vendors have dedicated a large percentage of their R&D efforts to developing features and enhancements that end-users have requested. Sometimes this is adding capabilities available in a different WFM application, or it’s to increase the platform’s flexibility and usefulness.
The top innovations organizations are interested in include:
- Additional agent scheduling options.
- Improved handling and staffing for omnichannel contact centers.
- Enhanced management of business process outsourcers (BPOs).
- Additional integrations with different application segments.
- Expanded back-office capabilities.
- Updated reporting and analytics.
AI is an important enabler for many of these items, as are enhancements to the underlying technology supporting the platform and how users interact with these solutions.
What’s Next for WFM?
Many areas of WFM solutions still need to be updated and expanded, even after the substantial investments made during the past couple of years.
We expect WFM vendors to continue to enhance their platforms during the next couple of years as demand for these improvements is large and growing.
Interest in new or updated WFM solutions is coming from newcomers (first-time WFM users) that appreciate the need to migrate from spreadsheets to packaged applications as their operating environments increase in complexity.
There are also a significant number of contact centers using five to 10-plus year-old WFM solutions that are finally considering a change because the new capabilities make it worth the investment and disruption.
We expect WFM providers to leverage growing market interest to continue enhancing and building out capabilities:
- Some competitors will come to market with new applications that replace outdated solutions.
- Other vendors will update technology that is over 20 years old, and which slows down their ability to introduce new features.
- And vendors will add modules to expand their offerings and position them to attract new business.
A few functional areas expected to attract attention during the next couple of years include:
- Long-term planning, which needs to be much more robust than only providing a forecasting module that looks 12-plus months into the future.
- Greater expansion into back office staffing where the total addressable market is more than double that of the contact center.
- Significant enhancements for analytics to provide intelligence and insights to improve decision making that helps the CX, employee experience (EX), and the bottom line.
WFM is so much more than the contact center productivity tool it was initially designed to be when it was introduced over 50 years ago.
These solutions are being reimagined into intelligent tools that enable contact centers, back offices, branches, and other people-intensive operations to cost-effectively staff their departments while balancing the needs of the enterprise and its employees.
AI is playing an essential role in transforming and expanding the capabilities of WFM solutions, but for companies to fully realize the benefits, they must alter their culture in addition to their technology.