The world of work has changed drastically in recent years. Since the pandemic, concepts like remote and hybrid work have become commonplace, and companies have begun investing in new strategies to build more engaged, satisfied, and productive teams.
Not only are employees demanding more from their employers, from greater levels of empathy to improved workplace technology, but business leaders are also beginning to understand the importance of properly empowering and utilizing their human resources. This is particularly evident in the contact centre landscape, where managers and supervisors need to ensure they’re effectively managing their teams, to preserve high levels of customer satisfaction and retention.
Workforce optimization tools, either offered as standalone products or implemented into CCaaS and CRM software, help companies to manage everything from scheduling and staffing to employee engagement, in one unified environment. So which tools are delivering the most value in this growing market? Here are some top vendors offering workforce optimization tools in 2023.
- Avaya
- Observe.ai
- NICE
- Genesys
- Talkdesk
- Playvox
- 8x8
- Five9
- Calabrio
- Verint
- OpenText
- Vonage
- Khoros
- EvaluAgent
- UJET
- Eleveo
- Alvaria
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Puzzel
Avaya
Avaya empowers companies with a wide variety of software solutions, hardware, and platforms, covering everything from contact centre capabilities to unified communications. The Avaya Workforce Optimization platform integrates with existing contact centre technologies and provides business leaders with the tools they need to take full advantage of their human resources.
The all-in-one tool allows users to record interactions and monitor service quality, ensuring high levels of customer and employee satisfaction, while boosting compliance levels. The solution also comes with tools which support supervisors in monitoring employee performance during interactions, as well as forecasting tools for staffing and scheduling.
Observe.ai
Specializing in conversational intelligence and customer experience solutions, Observe.ai provides businesses with an all-in-one toolkit for boosting staff performance. The comprehensive platform offered by the company combines conversational intelligence with omnichannel routing and conversation management, reporting, analytics, and more. There are even real-time AI solutions available to support both supervisors and agents during conversations.
Observe.ai’s technology gives companies new ways to unlock value in their teams with access to artificial intelligence. Not only does the platform help with scheduling and forecasting requirements, but it also comes with a host of useful tools for automatic quality assurance and agent coaching. Plus, intelligent analytics make it easier for businesses to preserve compliance and high customer satisfaction levels.
NICE
CCaaS and customer experience solutions vendor NICE offers a host of valuable products to today’s contact centres, including conversational AI and chatbots, interaction analytics, AI routing tools, and robotic process automation capabilities. The company’s complete suite of workforce engagement tools provides access to useful resources for quality and performance management, real-time interaction guidance, and call/screen recording services.
The nice Workforce Management platform helps companies to hit SLAs with greater accuracy and engage their agents across multiple locations and channels. There are automation tools available for minimizing maintenance tasks, as well as built-in solutions for long-term planning, schedule management, forecasting, and more.
Genesys
Offering solutions for a range of contact centre needs, Genesys delivers a portfolio of valuable tools to businesses, including contact centre software, digital engagement suites, AI bots and automation platforms. The Genesys Workforce Optimization platform can integrate with a company’s contact centre software, providing a range of ways to engage and manage employees.
The solution comes with forecasting and scheduling tools to help business leaders ensure they’re making the most of their human resources. Within the ecosystem, users can also find speech analytics and text analytics solutions, voice and screen recording capabilities, automated training management services, and more. The end-to-end platform even includes intelligent reporting and analytics tools.
Talkdesk
Focused on the customer experience landscape, Talkdesk produces contact centre platforms, AI-powered tools, and a host of other solutions specially designed to improve business interactions. The intelligent Talkdesk workforce management platform prioritizes employee experience and engagement with powerful AI insights and automation capabilities.
Businesses can use the Talkdesk ecosystem to simplify and automate the process of forecasting customer demand and developing staffing and scheduling strategies. It’s even possible to schedule employee workflows based on their skills and knowledge. Plus, the platform comes with a convenient chatbot to help manage open-ended change requests and shift changes. There’s even an adherence monitoring system to offer behind-the-scenes insights into team performance.
Playvox
Recognized by market analysts like Trust Radius for their contact centre workforce management technologies, Playvox helps companies to engage and empower their workforce. With built-in AI capabilities, the Playvox platform offers behind-the-scenes insights into opportunities for schedule and staffing optimization and provides guidance on how companies can reduce operational costs.
The Playvox WFM solution offers real-time visibility into business operations to help companies keep service levels and budgets on track. There’s an interactive dashboard companies can use to monitor crucial KPIs, as well as a convenient platform where team members can manage shift swaps and time-off requests.
8x8
Offering modular and customizable solutions to modern contact centres, 8x8 helps businesses to leverage the bespoke technologies they need to run more efficiently. Built into the contact centre portfolio of products, 8x8’s Workforce Management technology simplifies the process of forecasting expected interactions, service volume, and work items.
Companies can leverage the 8x8 technology to monitor and track schedule adherence with dashboards and automated alerts. Users can also automatically create schedules based on pre-defined criteria to ensure agents can deliver exceptional customer experiences. The workforce management system can also integrate with a range of other tools offered by 8x8, such as CX analytics platforms, speech analytics, and quality management services.
Five9
Five9 is a software as a service vendor focused on the customer experience landscape. The company offers a wide range of tools and solutions to business leaders, including CCaaS platforms, agent and supervisor desktops, and intelligent virtual assistants. Part of a comprehensive collection of employee engagement tools, the Workforce optimization platform offered by Five9 assists with scheduling staff, monitoring adherence, and improving workplace efficiency.
The all-in-one solution helps companies to manage their staff with accurate multi-channel, multi-skill forecasts, schedules, and intraday management tools. The platform also includes access to interaction analytics systems, performance management tools with KPI monitoring, and CRM integrations. Interaction recording and quality management tools are also available.
Calabrio
With solutions covering everything from remote team management to customer experience and risk and compliance monitoring, Calabrio serves a wide range of contact centre use cases. The Calabrio Workforce Optimization (WFO) platform includes all of the tools businesses need to forecast employee and customer needs and schedule their human resources effectively.
Within the platform, companies can find tools for monitoring quality management alongside solutions for business intelligence and analytics. The WFO solution also comes with gamification capabilities to help engage and unify workers, as well as compliant call recording tools and contact centre reporting capabilities.
Verint
Another contact centre software solution provider with their own dedicated workforce optimization and management platform, Verint has earned the recognition of leading analysts and groups such as G2 and Trust Radius. The WFO solutions offered by Verint are designed to meet the needs of evolving businesses with intelligent forecasting and business performance insights.
Companies can leverage scorecards for a behind-the-scenes view of employee efficiency and effectiveness. Plus, the cloud-based platform allows organizations to create and adjust schedules in seconds, using an all-in-one system for managing teamwork across locations and channels. The platform even comes with pre-built integrations for multiple third-party sources to provide greater visibility and access to workflow automation opportunities.
OpenText
Focusing on helping companies to empower their employees and unlock efficiency upgrades, OpenText offers a range of customer experience and employee experience management tools. The OpenText Contact Center workforce optimization platform includes a range of useful features, such as interaction recording for quality and compliance, agent scheduling and forecasting tools, and automatic interaction scoring and analysis.
