There is a certain kind of chaos that lives in a call center that is always busy. Calls coming in faster than agents can answer them. Someone is sick and can’t work. Something about a product just went live, and no one was ready for the spike. The difference between a good shift and a bad one in that setting often comes down to one question: does anyone know where the staffing gaps are before they become a problem?
That’s where NICE Workforce Management has been hiding for years, and it’s become more advanced than most people outside the company know.
NICE WFM, which is also known as IEX, is a software platform that was mostly made for call centers. Its main jobs are to make predictions, make schedules, and do what’s known as “adherence monitoring,” which checks to see if agents are doing what they’re supposed to do, when they’re supposed to do it. That could sound very simple. In real life, it’s really hard to get all three right at the same time, with dozens or hundreds of agents and different ways to contact them.
The level to which NICE relies on machine learning is what sets it apart from older scheduling tools. A platform called “best-pick technology” is used along with more than 40 forecasting algorithms. This technology basically compares different predictive models to past data and picks the one that gives the most accurate results for a certain type of contact or time period. Managers can set parameters like expected handle times, shrinkage rates, and seasonal changes, and the system will make schedules based on those inputs instead of having someone do the math by hand.
Still, it’s not clear if all organizations get the most out of these features right away. There is a real learning curve, and some users of platforms like Gartner Peer Insights have said that the scheduling interface can feel crowded. For large businesses that get a lot of calls, emails, chats, and social media messages, however, using spreadsheets and gut feelings to handle all of this is usually not a good idea.
The agent-facing mobile app is one feature that probably doesn’t get as much attention as it should. Employees can bid on shifts, ask for time off, see their performance metrics, and trade schedules with coworkers all without having to go through a manager. That may seem like a small thing, but contact centers have had a hard time with agent turnover in the past. Giving employees more access to and control over their own schedules seems to make things run more smoothly. Some might say that NICE saw this coming before a lot of its competitors did.
As the day goes on, the platform also lets you make changes to schedules in real time, which is called “intraday management.” The system can show coverage options and flag the gap if the number of calls at 11 a.m. is 15% higher than expected. A drag-and-drop interface lets managers override things by hand, but the recommendation is already there for them to see.
If you are new to the field, these terms can help you understand NICE WFM: AHT stands for “average handle time,” SLA for “service level agreement,” and “adherence” for “adherence,” which is the percentage of time agents are logged in and working as scheduled. The software didn’t come up with these metrics. They’re the same numbers call center managers have tracked for decades. They are brought to light faster by NICE, in a more detailed way, and with enough historical context to make them useful instead of just detailed.
It’s not clear if NICE is right for every organization. Pricing tends to run high — reports place it in the $135 to $209 per agent per month range depending on the plan — and some smaller operations may find simpler tools more practical. But NICE WFM is worth learning about because it shows where technology for managing employees has come. Making plans isn’t just an office job anymore. It’s more like operations science, and the platforms that are being built around it are beginning to look like operations science.
