Choosing Wisely: Expert-Led Comparisons of Leading WFM Software for Contact Centers – Scheduling Flexibility (9 of 10)

Navigating WFM Software Choices with Expert Guidance

Intro:

Scheduling flexibility is a cornerstone of effective workforce management, enabling businesses to adapt to fluctuating demands while empowering employees to take control of their work-life balance.

NICE WFM

NICE WFM software offers strong scheduling flexibility, enabling contact centers to adjust shifts dynamically to match fluctuating demand while respecting work rules. At its core is a simulation tool, which allows planners to model various scheduling limitations as the system works toward creating an optimal schedule to meet queue goals. Planners can set defined ranges for minimum/maximum hours, start and stop times, windows of opportunity for breaks, and rostered days off to handle increased shrinkage or demand spikes. Agents can also set schedule preferences, volunteer for extra hours, or reduce hours as needed, balancing business needs with employee flexibility.

Pros:

• Simulation-Based Planning: The simulation tool helps managers model and choose optimal schedules that meet coverage, efficiency, and policy goals.

• Controlled Flexibility for Businesses: Managers can set specific parameters for shift times and break windows, ensuring that operational requirements are met within defined work rules.

• Real-Time Demand Matching: NICE WFM dynamically aligns schedules to meet real-time demand, minimizing risks of overstaffing or understaffing.

• Agent Participation in Scheduling: Agents can indicate shift preferences, volunteer for extra hours, or opt out, enhancing engagement and reducing turnover.

• Roster Optimization: Days off can be aligned with demand forecasts, ensuring shifts are adequately staffed and reducing idle time.

Cons:

• Setup and Configuration Complexity: Defining work limits, agent access permissions, and flexible options can require careful setup, taking time and resources.

• Agent Preference vs. Business Needs Conflicts: While agent input is encouraged, balancing these preferences with operational needs can sometimes lead to unrealistic expectations. Agents may find that their preferred shifts or days off conflict with high-demand periods, creating frustration when adjustments are necessary to maintain service levels.

NICE WFM’s simulation tool and flexible scheduling capabilities provide contact centers with a powerful solution to balance organizational needs with agent satisfaction, allowing for agile, adaptive workforce management.

Alvaria/Aspect

Schedule flexibility lies at the heart of the Alvaria/Aspect WFM solution, providing a robust set of tools to balance business requirements with employee needs. These methods can be seamlessly combined, enabling you to prioritise fixed-shift workers first, layer in semi-flexible workers, and utilise the most adaptable scheduling options to fill any remaining gaps. This approach ensures every need is met while maintaining efficiency and flexibility.

Strengths

• The ability to combine various scheduling methods provides unmatched flexibility.

• By offering options for agents to bid on shifts, reserve them, or set preferences, employees gain a sense of control and empowerment over their schedules.

• Rule sets ensure compliance with labour laws while promoting fairness and equity.

Weaknesses

• Highly flexible options, like Flexible Shift Bids, can be time-intensive to configure and manage.

• Configuring Work and Equity rules can be challenging, particularly when complex negative logic is involved.

Genesys

Scheduling flexibility is a critical aspect of workforce management, especially in dynamic environments like contact centers. Genesys Cloud Workforce Management (WFM) offers several features to enhance scheduling flexibility.

Here are, from a scheduling flexibly perspective, our take on the pros and cons of working with Genesys WFM Cloud:

Pros

1. Improved Employee Satisfaction:-

   1. Flexibility in Shifts: Agents can have more control over their schedules, accommodating personal preferences and supporting work-life balance.

   2. Shift Bidding: Agents can bid for preferred shifts, which can contribute to higher job satisfaction and retention rates.

2. Increased Productivity:

   1. Dynamic Adjustments: The ability to adjust schedules on the fly ensures that staffing levels can meet real-time demand, contribution to enhancing overall productivity.

   2. Reduced Absenteeism: Flexible scheduling can work towards reducing absenteeism as employees can choose shifts that they are more likely to attend.

3. Operational Efficiency:

   1. Optimised Coverage: By providing flexible scheduling options, you can work towards optimal coverage during peak times without overstaffing during low-demand periods.

   2. Better Forecasting Accuracy: Flexible schedules can be aligned more closely with forecasts, improving resource allocation.

4. Enhanced Real-Time Management: Real-time adherence features allow for immediate schedule changes to address unexpected increases or decreases in call volume.

5. Agent Empowerment: Self-service options empower agents to make changes to their schedules, leading to quicker adaptation to changing conditions.

6. Attractive to Modern Workforce: Modern workforce demographics tend to prefer flexible work environments. Offering flexible schedules can make your organisation more attractive to younger talent.

Cons

1. Complex Implementation:

   1. Initial Setup: Setting up flexible scheduling systems can be complex and time-consuming, requiring thorough planning and configuration.

   2. Training Required: Both managers and employees will need training to effectively use new scheduling tools and processes.

2. Increased Management Complexity:

   1. Coordination Efforts: Managing a flexible workforce requires sophisticated coordination and constant monitoring, which can strain management resources.

   2. Potential Scheduling Conflicts: More flexibility can sometimes lead to conflicts and complications in ensuring all shifts are adequately covered.

3. Risk of Over or Under Staffing:

   1. Real-Time Adjustments Needed: Without careful monitoring, flexible schedules can result in over or understaffing, impacting service levels.

   2. Forecast Dependency: The accuracy of flexible scheduling is heavily dependent on accurate forecasting and real-time data.

4. System Reliability and Costs:

   1. Implementing and maintaining a flexible scheduling system in Genesys Cloud WFM can be costly, with licensing, integration, and ongoing maintenance expenses

   2. Any downtime or technical issues in the WFM system can disrupt scheduling and real-time adjustments.

5. Potential for Reduced Employee Consistency:

   1. Variable Shifts: Flexible scheduling might lead to inconsistency in the workforce, as agents may work different shifts each week. This can sometimes affect team cohesion and performance consistency.

   2. Adjustment Periods: Employees may need time to adjust to new schedules, which could temporarily affect performance.

Conclusion

Genesys Cloud WFM offers robust tools for flexible scheduling, which can significantly enhance operational efficiency, employee satisfaction, and overall productivity. However, these benefits come with challenges such as increased management complexity, potential setup costs, and dependency on accurate forecasting. When implemented thoughtfully, scheduling flexibility can be a valuable asset for any dynamic work environment.

injixo

injixo addresses the need of scheduling flexibility by providing tools and features that allow for scheduling automation with self-service options that let employees influence their schedules within predefined parameters.

Strengths

• All-in-one scheduling: injixo supports flexible scheduling for various tasks within a shift. For example, it can allocate time for calls, training, and administrative work within a single schedule.

• Shift swapping and bidding: through injixo Me, agents can swap shifts or bid on available shifts, providing flexibility while maintaining coverage.

• Dynamic updates: injixo accommodates real-time changes to schedules, such as adjusting break times or adding shifts to meet unexpected demand.

• Self-managed availability: agents can enter their availability preferences directly into injixo Me.

Weaknesses

• Limited availability rules: injixo allows agents to set their availability but lacks strict rules to enforce alignment with contractual hours, minimum number of hours per day, number of available late shifts, etc. They can force the system to follow their availability, which could lead to gaps in coverage if agents enter availability that doesn’t meet business needs.

• Uniform feature access: features like entering availability or shift swapping, if enabled, are available to all agents without role-specific customisation. This limits the ability to tailor access based on skill levels or specific team requirements.

Verint

Verint offers a wide range of options when it comes to scheduling flexibility:

Strengths:

• Different channels (such as voice, email, social, and others) and non-demand work (e.g., project or admin tasks) can be scheduled within the solution.

• A broad set of options for agent empowerment, including shift bidding, shift preferences, vacation request management, VTO, and various assignment rules to introduce fairness into the schedule.

• A mobile app that supports both agent empowerment and planners.

• The ability to choose whether to schedule based on agents' preferences or to achieve the optimal service level.

Weaknesses:

• The tool can be complex, and many of the rules might end up contradicting each other.

• Users do not have visibility into the priorities of the scheduling options.

Calabrio

With Calabrio creating flexibility into schedules is very simple, with the ability to create scheduling rules that can operate within a window of time or shift length. This allows the system to decide the “best fit” of scheduled based on your rules. It also has a very good optimization feature, which allows you to change activities within a schedule such as Breaks/lunches, assigned work activities, start/stop times and days off.

Calabrio also allows users to interact with their schedules, such as adding extra hours, applying for overtime, moving breaks/lunches or swapping shifts. All of this can be done via the My Time interface and mobile app.

As well as allowing employees to change their schedule, it also allows employees to enter preferences and you can decide what % of preferences should granted during schedule generation. It also allows users to enter their availability, times and days they are available to work, so you can build schedules around their choices.

Calabrio includes features such as Schedule Bidding allowing employee’s to bid on a set of pre-defined shift patterns. Shift Limits allows users to define a maximum number of shift types that can be worked in a given period, giving you flexibility whilst also giving some guarantees to your employees.

Strengths:

• Versatile schedule rules allows users to define a wide variety of shift patterns and shift lengths all within the same rule. This provides users with the ability to have very flexible shift options.

• Variety of scheduling methods , so you can chose which one works best for your organization. Whether you have fixed schedules, rotational patterns or use self-scheduling all can be done bone within Calabrio WFM.

• Full optimization provides more flexibility once scheduled have been created. This means if you need to change the start times, days off or activities within a shift due changes in demand, all can be done via the optimization feature.

Weaknesses:

• Initial schedules are not optimal meaning multiple steps must be taken to ensure you have the best fit. This means you may have to optimize schedules multiple times before you get the right combination of shift patterns to meet demand.

• Highly skilled environments could be complicated to configure due to some of the limitations of the system. Whilst it is not impossible to have high numbers of skills, the setup could be complex and time consuming.

• Setup can be complicated if you have lots of different scheduling rules. Users must fully ensure they understand all the different schedule settings to avoid errors when generating shift patterns. Rotational patterns than span a long period of time can take time to configure and maintain.

Summary