I used a roundtable approach in writing this to collect input from a group of friends. Workforce management (WFM) doesn’t fundamentally change year-over-year, which makes our trends a little more subtle than the other contact center disciplines.
Lori Bocklund hosted Strategic Contact’s annual “State of the Market Contact Center Technology Update” and included a very interesting word cloud showing current vendor buzz. A word cloud is a picture visually representing words that give the greatest rank (*font size) to those appearing most frequently. They may not be the most important or the most meaningful, but they are the most popular.
Workforce Management was in extremely tiny print – meaning, it doesn’t generate much buzz anymore. The only word that was smaller was “Gamification.” Artificial Intelligence (AI), of course, filled the screen with its giant footprint.
So, the general consensus from my network wasn’t surprising: AI is everywhere. And it still doesn’t know how to distinguish between signal versus noise without human guidance.
But pressing beyond AI, other things are still happening that deserve attention.
Mary Weiss is my WFM twin, meaning we are your annoying friends who finish each other’s sentences. We used to attend conferences together and split up the sessions to cover twice as much ground, then regroup and compare notes. Whatever I’m dealing with, chances are she’s already been there. If I don’t have it, she does, and vice versa. Her thoughts were…
Only a handful of dedicated WFM companies are left now because the bigger WFM vendors continue to acquire the smaller ones, including those with technology outside of traditional WFM offerings, like speech analytics or recording companies. They’re getting bigger, and the market is getting smaller. It’s rare to find dedicated WFM teams in centers with less than 300 people.
AI is moving into the ACD sector, too. Many vendors are working on algorithms boosted by AI, especially to help smooth and identify trends.
My Tran is one of the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) 2024 Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award nominees for his amazing work at UC Davis Health. I always feel a special kinship with people like My, who started their career as a phone agent and worked their way up to a role in Workforce Management. My is involved in a five-year development roadmap of contact center technology and he frames things towards their ultimate purpose.
WFM teams are moving out of the background and into the rooms where decisions are made. Putting a face on the WFM team tells people who we are, what we do, and exactly how we can support them to achieve their goals.
Instead of seeing WFMers as micro-managers, use our resource tools to promote the call center staff and be noticed for their good deeds. An excellent example is adherence because a great adherence stat says, “You are reliable, and here’s the math that proves it!”
AI is getting attention, but it is not something we can set and forget. Translating the story behind the data to an AI engine is difficult. There is a danger in letting it go unsupervised because the system must have intelligent information to make sound recommendations.
Vicki Herrell is the genius behind making WFM fun. Attending the annual conference is such a joy. It barely qualifies as work, and it never disappoints. Returning from the annual conference is also great because that’s when we put all the new ideas we learned into action. She shared this about the 2024 conference:
WFM as a career is trending. The SWPP conference explored sessions on redesigning large WFM teams, figuring out where best to spend your time, and learning how to balance customers with employees with business needs.
An interesting evolution is that five years ago, we were talking a LOT about remote agents, and we’re not really talking about that much anymore. It used to be a reward for the high performers who could self-direct and keep their KPIs up (after a home visit confirmed they had a dedicated space without distractions.) Times changed: Hybrid and Remote are officially the New Normal.
AI’s purpose in WFM is to remove human interaction from the work task, but that means we’re also losing opportunities. It leaves a gap in the relationship between an exception code and the reason why it’s happening, the understanding of if it’s going to repeat so we can proactively prepare for it going forward, and the most basic opportunity of all: to learn from one another.
If you’re already a member of SWPP then you already know it comes with a special perk: we receive a Tip of the Week every Sunday evening like clockwork. A recent one from Mitch Todd had an interesting perspective on AI. To summarize…
AI can’t replicate a forecaster’s expertise, but it can run models quickly, calculate better models for forecasters to run, and support an expert forecaster in exercising their best judgment.
“…[AI] can craft a mathematically optimal schedule that an expert can review and adjust…” —Mitch Todd
AI can’t replace a scheduler’s years of experience, but it can craft a mathematically optimal schedule that an expert can review and adjust; with the AI-built schedule as the base, the scheduler has more time to consider what’s best for the business while honoring employee needs.
In short, AI enhances your team’s capabilities, enabling them to automate repetitive tasks and prioritize high-value work. It’s not a replacement—it’s a force multiplier.
And to that, I say, “May the Force be with you, Mitch!”
Dan Smitley always has one or two fresh ideas, or in this case, several, because he is THAT kind of WFMer.
- Schedule flexibility moves from early majority to late majority. If people don’t start offering self-service options, they will land in the laggard zone of the Adoption Curve.
- Continued integration/evolution of WFM into WEM [workforce engagement management] and WFO [workforce optimization]. Both from the vendors and from those in the trenches, including…
- Expect to hear more about “good schedules” being defined by how they balance customer, business, and agents…not just how well it matches the forecasted workload.
- Expect to see things like “agent effort” being considered in the forecasting process.
- Give additional context to handle time and possibly use it to forecast how one’s AHT might adjust throughout a shift if the effort being asked to maintain is too high (the reverse being true as well).
- Alvaria/Aspect will change their branding for the 28th time.
- More vendors will say they have “AI” in their WFM tools, but all they really mean is that they have a special twist on their Erlang calculator…like they always have.
Tyler Dixon had just been to three conferences in three weeks when we spoke. He’s what we call a “road warrior,” which means he gets to see and experience trends in real time. He’s doing some cool stuff over at livepro and always has an interesting perspective on everything WFM-related.
Omnichannel is always around, but now we must ask if it’s best to continue blending agents or better to keep them separate.
Blended groups used to make sense when agents were handling simple FAQs, but an improved knowledge system changed that dynamic. Now, we can drive more customers to self-service, leaving agents with the complex calls that require expertise. This makes it important to carefully prioritize agents according to their skill sets, affecting how far schedule limits can reach to remain fully staffed.
Using AI to consolidate and streamline knowledge reduces handle time because agents, self-service, and chat-bots will have updated information, and because it’s dynamically updated, it will always be the right information.
I was shocked to see that Tyler and I have 715 mutual connections on LinkedIn. I didn’t realize I even had 700-plus connections on LinkedIn, but I loved seeing how wide our unique industry has grown. If you’re reading this and we’re not already networked, send me an invite: I promise to accept it.
Juanita Coley – “The WFM Whisperer,” gave a very passionate keynote called The Future of Workforce Optimization at CrmXchange’s 2024 WFO Virtual Conference, where she talked about the future and what it looks like:
It is built upon a firm foundation.
It includes AI, automation, remote, and hybrid, but…
Hybrid has a new meaning: people and robots working together and learning from each other in a hybrid workforce, supporting a gig economy, and working in the office, remotely, and in distributed teams.
Collaboration on Customer Experience (CX), including science, psychology, strategy, sustainability, and systems. With Employee Experience (EX), including employees who are equipped, empowered, and engaged.
She went on to clarify that EX does not mean pizza parties for employees, at which point the chat room chimed in agreement, nobody wants your pizza!
“Hybrid has a new meaning: people and robots working together and learning from each other in a hybrid workforce…” —Juanita Coley
And when she explained that the collaboration of CX + EX = HX (Human Experience) it made my spirit soar, which is exactly how a keynote should feel.
If you’re not already on the CrmXchange mailing list, I’d highly recommend it. It’s free to attend, and this year’s virtual conference had 16 great sessions.
Every conversation about the future of WFM included AI in some way, shape, or form. But we know that WFM isn’t purely math and predictions. It’s always been defined as an art and a science. AI can take care of the scientific side, but expertise and good judgment are still necessary for the art; otherwise, you might end up with a deformed forecast that is missing an arm: or maybe even one with an extra arm!
