Workforce management is gaining renewed attention as contact centers face more variable demand, tighter budgets and growing pressure to protect both customer and agent experience.
In fact, 8x8 reported its WFM customer base had increased by more than 170% since November 2025, pointing to an increasing demand for tools that can replace manual planning without creating another complex technology project.
To keep up with competition, CX leaders should assess whether their current planning model gives supervisors enough timely, reliable information to prevent service issues.
In conversation with CX Today, Lisa Orford, Global Vice President for Contact Centre PM at 8x8, discussed why spreadsheet-based workforce planning is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain as AI changes the work handled by human agents.
“As AI agents take the simple interactions, the humans are left with the harder, longer conversations, and you can’t schedule for that in a spreadsheet.”
Why Spreadsheets Still Persist Despite Manual Friction
For many contact centers, spreadsheets have remained the default workforce management tool because the alternatives have historically been too expensive and complicated to implement.
In fact, WFM platforms were originally designed for larger operations, leaving smaller teams struggling to remain ahead amid substantial costs, lengthy deployments, integrations, and training requirements.
“For the smaller teams around 50 seats plus, that’s a massive project and cost,” Orford explained.
As a temporary fix, manual planning became the easiest option, despite its obvious operational problems.
“Spreadsheets won by default, not because anybody necessarily thought they were good, but they just fit,” she said.
Unfortunately, the costs of spreadsheet-led planning can be difficult to identify, with poor forecasts often leading to understaffing, gaps in coverage, and increased overtime.
With many supervisors spending too much time resolving scheduling problems instead of supporting agents through coaching, their insight into the daily employee capacity becomes lessened.
From here, the expenses may become accepted as part of daily operations rather than recognised as consequences of an inadequate planning process.
“Nobody could see the cost of the spreadsheet,” she said.
“The overtime, supervisor firefighting instead of coaching, those costs become invisible.”
Without a clear view of these costs, contact center leaders may have little incentive to invest in a dedicated WFM platform.
Particularly when budgets are tight and implementation requires additional resources, spreadsheets often offer the best practical alternative.
However, 8x8’s reported 3 times growth in WFM adoption suggests that reducing these barriers can change that calculation, coming almost entirely from existing 8x8 Contact Center customers enabling the capability.
For smaller operations, this solution can make WFM more accessible by replacing manual processes with more consistent planning, while giving managers greater visibility into staffing requirements and operational performance.
From Scheduling to Smarter Decisions
As AI agents take on more routine customer interactions, workforce planning needs to account for the changing nature of the work reaching human agents.
