Real-Time Workforce Management: Stop Contact Center Service Level Risks Before They Start

In contact centers, increasing channels, volatile demand, hybrid staffing models, and strict SLAs are overwhelming the Workforce Management (WFM) planning teams. Traditional WFM was not designed for this complex environment. Dashboards in these solutions show what has already happened:

• The volumes that spiked
• The missed service goals
• The unplanned absences
• The unexpected, mandatory overtime
• Or the opposite, the overstaffing and wasted capacity

What contact centers need is real-time WFM that acts like an early warning system, enabling them to:

• Identify deviations to plan in real-time
• Predict the impact of those deviations
• Guide teams on the actions needed to course correct
• Help managers continually align resources to demand in real time to meet service goals

This is Workforce Excellence, powered by real-time WFM. This is “WFM at the Speed of Life.”

What is Workforce Excellence?

Workforce Excellence is the next generation of AI-powered WFM. It is real-time WFM that enables you to continuously adapt forecasts, schedules, assigned activity and intraday workloads at the speed of life — and business. It includes many AI capabilities, including:

• AI-powered forecasting
• Long-term capacity planning and trending
• Hyper-flexible, agent-controlled schedule changes
• Intraday optimization and Operations Assist
• Real-time data insights

In today’s blog, we are going to focus on our latest real-time WFM innovation: Operations Assist.

Real-Time workforce management: meet Operations Assist

Operations Assist is an AI-powered early warning system within Verint Workforce Intelligence (WFI) that helps WFM managers and real-time analysts proactively detect, prioritize, and resolve intraday workforce issues, all from a simple, single, unified view.

Built on WFI’s AI foundation, Operations Assist continuously analyzes workforce performance and operational signals to identify early warning signs across service levels, occupancy, adherence, and forecast accuracy. It predicts downstream impact and recommends the best corrective actions before service levels are affected.

In simple terms, it acts as a real-time WFM coach for intraday teams, highlighting what matters most, explaining why it’s happening, and guiding the right action at the right time.

How does Operations Assist work?

Operations Assist moves intraday management from reactive monitoring to proactive action by:

• Continually analyzing operational metrics by intervals
• Detecting KPI deviations to plan in near real time
• Predicting impact before disruptions occur
• Providing Gen AI-driven impact summaries
• Recommending mitigating actions for faster resolution
• Reducing reliance on manual dashboard monitoring

Take the Operations Assist interactive demo!

Four common problems real-time WFM and Operations Assist solve

There are many variables that can cause your actuals to differ from what you had planned. Here are just four of the most common deviations from plan that can impact service levels and costs.

Unexpected dip in demand

Verint real-time WFM delivers highly accurate forecasting — typically 95% accuracy. But life happens and things change. Let’s imagine you’ve increased staffing for the week of a new product launch, anticipating an uptick in inquiries and sales. But for some reason the response is lackluster. Now you have excess capacity.

Operations Assist will detect the forecast-to-actual variances early on, determine the impact on service and desired staffing levels, and make recommendations on how to modify schedules and activities so there is no wasted capacity.

Real-time WFM recommendations could include:

• Schedule training or coaching sessions at specific intervals/times of day that demand is expected to be low
• Shifting agents from direct customer service to more operational support tasks
• Offer voluntary time off to targeted agents based on their skills, channel assignments, or seniority

Unexpected, unplanned absences

Oh no, the flu is going around, and you have a dozen unplanned absences! Operations Assist can identify the shortfall early, determine at what intervals during the day you’ll most be challenged to meet service levels, and make recommendations to alleviate the burden on the current agents while still hitting your SLAs.

Real-time WFM recommendations could include:

• Cancelling any planned training or coaching sessions
• Moving breaks and lunches to avoid the most impacted intervals
• Identifying agents who have available hours in this scheduling period, and offering them an extra shift
• Moving agents between channels and tasks for better coverage of the impacted KPIs

Deviations to adherence

Sometimes plans are impacted by agents not adhering to their schedules, or supervisors overriding planned activities. Perhaps an agent takes a break later than planned. Perhaps four or five agents go to lunch at the same time, even though only two of them were scheduled for that timeslot.

Or perhaps a supervisor sees that a few new hires need some help, and they pull other agents off their desks to give their support. Even small changes to plan can have a ripple effect on service levels. Operations Assist can identify these deviations and calculate the impact that adherence violations at scale could have on SLAs.

Real-time WFM recommendations could include:

• Targeted interventions to stabilize performance in real time
• Adding coaching sessions to utilize unnecessary overstaffing
• Optimize activities to adjust to the day’s changing patterns

Unexpectedly long handle times

Capacity plans are built on forecasted demand, handle times — how long it takes to complete the work types forecasted — and agent availability. When your handle times are off, then your plan is going to be off.

Let’s say that product launch I mentioned earlier didn’t result in the desired volume of calls, but it did result in a certain segment calling in with detailed technical questions about the product — questions the agents weren’t readily equipped to answer. Operations Assist would detect the change in handle times, analyze the cause of the change, determine the effect on later intervals and SLAs, and make recommendations on how to mitigate the impact.

Real-time WFM recommendations could include:

• Alerting product managers that more detailed knowledge resources are needed
• Shifting agents with more technical skills to this channel or segment routing
• Moving breaks or lunches at specific intervals to accommodate the longer handle times on these interactions

The benefits of real-time WFM and Operations Assist

Verint Workforce Intelligence Operations Assist helps WFM Planners and Real-time Analysts continuously align resources to demand. The solution enables contact centers to:

• Protect service levels and customer experience
• Reduce manual monitoring and end-of-day analysis
• Improve intraday staffing and decision accuracy
• Respond faster to demand volatility
• Scale operations without adding headcount

Want to learn more about Workforce Excellence and real-time workforce management? Join our upcoming webinar, “Life Happens. Can Your WFM Software Keep Up?” on July 29 at 11 a.m. ET.

Reserve your spot now!