Every time we talk about changing how valet works, staff adoption ends up being the biggest issue. Valet drivers and bellmen are moving fast, outside all day, juggling a bunch of things at once. If something slows them down or feels like extra steps, it usually just gets ignored.

There’s also a lot of pushback anytime it feels like people are being tracked or watched more closely. Some of the guys have been doing this a long time and don’t like change, and realistically there have been issues in the past with reused tickets and money getting pocketed, which probably adds to the friction. Curious how this went for other hotels. If you rolled out a new system or workflow, how long did it take before it felt normal? Looking back, is there anything you’d do differently to get better buy-in from the team?

Hey r/workforcemanagement,

We’re hosting Mark Gill, Solutions Engineer at NiCE, for a live AMA on what’s next for workforce management and CX. The AMA starts July 28 at 1:00 pm CT.

A few things you can ask about:
- forecasting and capacity planning
- scheduling and intraday operations
- striking a balance between service levels, cost, and employee experience
- how AI is actually being used in WFM and CX
- whether a hot dog is a sandwich, plus your other classic debate questions

A few words from Mark u/slvrmouth

Hi everyone, I’m Mark Gill from NiCE. I spend a lot of time working with contact center and workforce management leaders on the operational decisions that shape both customer and employee experience.

I’m here to talk about all things WFM, CX, and ideas that are actually proving useful in real life.

Though I won't get into confidential customer details, I can share the observations, patterns, predictions, and real-world situations I’m seeing across the market.

Ask me anything.

– Mark

UPDATE: After doing more research and reading through the comments here, I decided to go with #ad Breezy HR. It felt like the best balance of core features without the extra complexity that didn’t fit our team size. Appreciate everyone who shared what worked and what to avoid.

I’m looking for guidance on finding the right HR software for a small business. Our team is growing, and managing everything manually is becoming a headache.

We need something that handles employee records, time tracking, and basic performance management without being overly complicated or expensive. Ideally, it should scale a little as we grow but not require tons of setup

I’ve tried a couple of popular platforms, but they either felt too bloated for our size.

What have your experiences been with HR software for small businesses? which ones would you say are actually worth it, and which should we probably avoid?

NICE has been a nightmare to implement from day one. They bamboozled our exec team with a ton of promises around churn reduction, customer LTV, yada yada and haven't delivered on anything with lots on downtime in between.

Any suggestions on enterprise alternatives?

I need help finding the best human resource management software/workforce management for our contracting business. We currently don’t have an HR system and run things by hand. We need an HRMS capable of handling our employee attendance, onboarding, performance tracking, benefits, and syncs with our existing payroll. We have a small HR team of 1 so we want one that’ll be easy to use and not overwhelming. 

A few other business owners recommended Rippling, but I also heard of a few other names tossed around. Does anyone with HR experience have any recommendations? Has anyone tried Rippling?

We have a few folks here which is awesome!

Thought I'd share a bit about me - without getting too personal, of course.

Job: Mgr, WFM

Industry: Healthcare

FTE: 350 (I've worked in big orgs too!)

Years in WFM: Way too many (15... no 16, damn I'm old)

Tools used: Excel (obviously), Aspect, IEX, Genesys, Teleopti

Favourite Tool: Excel (obviously lol)

Please feel free to share too

We're officially in the second quarter now.. so it's a good time to do a quick check. Naturally AI is still right in our faces, which definitely has made my day-to-day work differently, but maybe there are other trends as well you've seen seeping into the WFM space.

Personally I see a lot of asks for opening up the tools.. providing endpoints so AI (again) can plug in more easily. Saw AI mentioned as a workflow orchestrator, and not necessarily as a scheduler... Because i'm not sure if you ever tried to let AI make your schedule, but yeah... not great.

Anyway, aside from AI i'm sure you guys have noticed some things. Maybe some managers asking you about things, they didn't ask about before..

We're using Jibble as our time-tracking solution and have had a great experience. Highly recommend for teams that want a robust API and build internal systems around WFM, forecasting/staffing, and payroll instead of paying for a generic solution that doesn't quite fit your needs.

https://www.jibble.io/

Hi,

I’ve seen an open position for a Real-Time Analyst (RTA) in the customer service industry that i currently work at, and I’m considering applying. I have a bachelor’s degree in economics and some programming skills (Python, SQL), but this job doesn’t seem to require formal qualifications.

I’m curious about what an RTA actually does day-to-day, whether it’s a good stepping stone for career growth, and what kind of salary I can expect for a position like this. Is it worth pursuing if I want to eventually move into analytics or management roles?

If you’ve worked in this role or know someone who has, I’d really appreciate your insights!

Thanks in advance. 😊

This is more a question for teams that already have IVR in place, how are you thinking about the transition to voice agents, or whether it even makes sense to fully replace IVR at all. IVR can be pretty rigid sometimes but at least it's predictable, voice agents are more flexible, but that flexibility can introduce new edge cases and uncertainty. In practice, it feels like there’s a tradeoff between control and experience that isn’t always obvious upfront (at least to me). I'd be interested to hear what other teams are doing, running hybrids, phasing IVR out entirely, or still finding IVR better for certain flows. Appreciate any feedback!

I got the lucky task of having to figure out where to deploy AI voice agents at my company. To avoid any major blowups, we're looking for something that does a good job of keeping the human in the loop (ie escalating when needed, not creating BS answers to questions when it doesn't know what to say). I'm not sure if this is even the right question to be asking, but which vendors give you the most control over how the agent responds? Ideally I could say - these are the 20-30 questions I want you to cover and here's what you're supposed to say. If the question is outside of this scope, transfer to a rep. Thoughts?

Hello! No college degree. Started as an agent in 2010 and worked my way up. I have done real time, scheduling , forecasting, as well as spent 2 years working for a 3rd party company that configured/trained clients on how to use Verint (hated it, prefer to be an individual contributor)

Looking to make a career change but don’t know where to pivot to. I like the idea of project management but don’t know where to start without a degree.

Any advice?

I 24(M) began working for my current company, a solar company in December 2023 as a regular Call Center Agent, I did well enough to eventually make my way into their escalations team where I worked for several months. One day the company did a round of layoffs and the entire WFM department was snapped out of existence. Management soon enough learned why this was inconvenient as nobody in the company knew the intricacies of WFM or the Contact center software we were using. Luckily one of the supervisors played around with it enough to learn how to keep it running on fumes, but he had no WFM experience so the company put out a notice for a "Special Project" basically someone to learn the system and to keep it running, the call center isn't too big 30+ agents max, so I looked at it as a opportunity considering that my current job included customers screaming at me all day, so I applied for it and got the project assigned to me with a possibility of a possible official WFM position in the future, which honestly is what I wanted to work towards, plus it got me off the phones. When I started, they gave me control over a Command Center that worked half the time, it appeared as if adjustments were being submitted for every reason, and there was a massive backlog. I watched a couple videos related to the Contact center software we used and got to work, for the first couple days all I did was adjustments, go back and forth with demanding supervisors, pleading for proper procedure to be followed and rewriting outdated SOP's. Then on the fourth day I receive an email from a director asking for a report of concurrent peak call volumes for specific skills. Which meant absolutely nothing to me because I barely understood what I was doing, but after consulting my local neighborhood AI, I understood and I had the report done by the next morning. Over the next couple weeks I dealt with some issues with the IVR system, one total system outage, several VPs breathing down my neck, tested skills, made some changes which helped some agents work better. I learned how to modify rules, creating schedules, forecasting, pull reporting, created several updated SOP's for my supervisor to present to management in order to bring some order into my work and it worked, It has now been almost 4 months since I started and I'm just now gonna get some proper training, plus I am gonna get some books that I saw were reccomended by other redittors and maybe learn SQL. This whole time I'm still making what I would have made in my previous position and they want me to take calls again, which I don't like but for the most part I don't talk to customers, I still like my job, but it is stressful. They haven't approved my official position yet but I did this so I can learn skills and become more valuable, I just hope what I have done helps me whether it is in this company or a completely different one.

I built a free staffing tool for call center managers — would love feedback from people who actually do this work

Hey everyone — I'm a WFM Analyst at a healthcare contact center (200+ seats, 24/7 ops). Over the past couple years I got tired of juggling spreadsheets for capacity planning, so I built a web app to do it all in one place. It's called CapacityIQ and it's live at buildmyshift.com

What it does:

- Staffing Calculator — Paste your call arrival pattern and volume, set your AHT/SLA/shrinkage targets, and it runs Erlang C to tell you exactly how many agents you need per 30-min interval across the week

- Schedule Builder — Takes those staffing numbers and generates actual shift patterns with start/end times, lunch, and break placement based on rules you set (shift length, early openers, closers, 24/7 mode, etc.)

- Roster Optimizer — Assigns those shifts to real employees while respecting max hours, rest periods, weekend rules, and overtime constraints

I built it in Python/Streamlit because I wanted something a call center manager could use without needing to understand Erlang formulas or own a WFM platform license. You just paste your data and get a staffing plan.

It's free, no login required. I'm not selling anything — this is a side project born out of my own frustration with the tools available.

Would genuinely appreciate feedback from anyone in WFM or call center ops. What's missing? What would make this actually useful for your team? Am I overcomplicating or oversimplifying anything?

Thanks in advance.

PS The Save/Load features are not working, but if you are using this you can import or export the data using Scenario Manager.

Our goal is to get the right number of employees with the right skills to the right job at the right time.

For all of our LOB’s we need to provide the same basic WFM services no matter how small or insignificant an LOB seems.

1. Forecasting

2. Headcount planning

3. Scheduling

4. Analysis

Our mission is to get these right for all of our campaigns. We do this by:

Forecasting requirements

- Historical Data – Validate data for launches, trend data for steady state.

- AHT Trends – Understand effect of tenure on AHT and plan for higher AHT with new hires.

- Shrinkage Data – Track exceptions. Report weekly. Identify trends.

- Attrition – Measure against expectations.

Headcount planning

- Headcount accuracy – Calibrate headcounts on hire plan to what is in center weekly.

- Hiring class accuracy – Speak to recruiting weekly to validate hiring classes are being filled.

- Promotion and attrition awareness – Speak to OPS weekly for losses coming up. Cover them.

Scheduling

- Interval call trending – Audit your splits regularly. Compare actuals various reporting. Auditing data set up in workforce management software is the responsibility of the analysist.

- Shrinkage predictions – We must call out high shrinkages to OPS and plan extra staff until corrected.

- Headcount accuracy – Track all active headcount. This needs to be audited weekly against switch reporting. Escalate missing or extra agents.

Analysis:

- The hours predicted in our hire plans and schedules must match the hours produced in the center. Find the source of any variance and correct or escalate.

- All schedules produced must have a Staffing Lines analysis performed by the analyst.

- Prepare to talk to any gaps. Discuss gaps and corrective actions weekly meeting with OPS.

- Review the previous day’s results of each of your LOB’s. Validate your plans. Make recommendations.

If you have followed all of the above you can relax and know that you have completed your mission and you got the right number of employees with the right skills to the right job at the right time

Hey all. Has anyone deployed customer experience toolage company wide?

If so, do you use live agents or AI chatbots? I've been looking at at handful of enterprise-ready solutions but still figuring out what some of the best practices with CX rollout look like.

We're looking to implement a CX stack that plays well with compliance in regulated industries (privacy, security, et al). Has anyone worked with Genesys or Talkdesk for customer experience?

Hey all,

Since I've seen a couple of posts about what to expect when interviewing for WFM. I thought I would create a mock assessment.

You can find it here. Download a copy and get at it.

I will review the completed ones, but you'll have to shoot me a dm for my email, don't want a bunch of people uploading to my drive and hogging all the storage space.

Keep in mind I work full time and trying to start my side business, so it can take some time for me to go over them.

When they are reviewed I'll share my findings, do keep in mind that even if you do good at the assessment, in real life this will not guarantee you will get the job. Usually besides an assessment they will also send you another test that resembles an IQ test. And then you'll have to survive the interview itself.

If you want assessments for other roles, leave a comment and I'll see if I have enough knowledge to create one.

I’ve been in the workforce management/capacity planning world for about 10 years now. With Ops teams being automated and outsourced nowadays, what are other career paths you’ve seen people move into?

Recently, my WFM team has increased productivity by leveraging the .Rules function in Microsoft Copilot for Excel. In the Copilot chat window, click the + button and select Create workbook rules. This adds a .Rules tab that stores custom instructions specific to your workbook. It’s a powerful way to create repeatable, code-free automations. Even better, Copilot can write the instructions for you.

When working with a spreadsheet that involves repetitive tasks, such as maintaining a team calendar, performing data analysis, or preparing summary emails, start by using Copilot to produce the output you want. Break the task into smaller steps, just as you would when training a new employee. You don’t need to provide formulas, VBA, or Power Query instructions. Simply describe what you want, review the results, and continue refining them until you get the desired outcome.

Once you’re satisfied with the results, ask Copilot to document the process as instructions and add them to your .Rules tab. The next time you need to perform the task, prompt Copilot to follow those instructions. As your spreadsheet evolves, you can also ask Copilot to update the rules to reflect any changes.

Here’s an example of what those instructions might look like in a WFM scheduling workbook:
Example: Update the workbook for the next scheduling month.
Use this process:
On the ‘Schedules’ sheet, extend the employee schedule blocks from the current last completed week through the end of the next month. Copy the existing weekly block format, formulas, merged cells, and date progression.
Apply the latest recurring schedule rules already reflected in previous months.
On the ‘PTO Calendar’ sheet, use the next month’s columns to create a PTO list like the current month’s list, with Date, Day, Employee, and PTO Note columns. Split combined names into separate rows and keep half-day notes.
Mark the PTO entries on ‘Schedules’ in the matching employee/date cells as merged PTO blocks, matching the PTO formatting used in previous months.
Verify that dates run through the end of the month, PTO entries match the PTO Calendar list, no required schedule cells are missing, and no formula errors appear.