Top 10 Workforce Management (WFM) Software For Call Centers

Call center workforce management (WFM) is the process of making sure there are enough call center agents working at the right times to handle customer inquiries. It includes forecasting call volumes, creating work schedules, and keeping track of how things are going during the day. The goal is to make sure customers get help quickly while keeping things efficient and not overworking or underusing staff.

For example, if a company is launching a new product and expects an increase in customer calls, WFM helps predict how many agents will be needed and schedules them accordingly. If more or fewer calls come in than expected, managers can make quick changes to the schedule. This helps customers get support faster and keeps the call center running smoothly.

Workforce management software helps call centers forecast demand and schedule the right agents to reduce wait times and improve service. It also automates tasks, enables real-time monitoring, and boosts efficiency and employee satisfaction.

1. Forecasting and Scheduling: WFM system accurately forecasts the call volume based on collected data and schedules agents, minimizing both overstaffing and understaffing to deliver effective service.
2. Improved Productivity: Proper workload distribution ensures agents can complete tasks and focus on delivering high-quality customer service without feeling overwhelmed or underutilized.
3. Cost Efficiency: With accurate forecasting, the system minimizes overstaffing, reducing labor costs and unnecessary overtime.
4. Real-Time Monitoring: You can monitor agents’ performance by observing their call handling times, their attitude towards customers, and their follow-up on call scripts. This helps you make immediate adjustments to schedules and workflows to ensure goals are met.
5. Enhanced Customer Experience: Utilizing skilled agents enables effective call handling, which reduces wait times and increases first-call resolution rates, thereby enhancing the overall customer experience.

The best workforce management software solutions are Calilio, Dialpad, Zendesk, RingCentral, and Nice CXone. They ensure that the right people with the right skills and expertise are placed in the correct location. With forecasting, scheduling, and AI automation, the software optimizes staffing levels and allocates shifts effectively.

Calilio is a WFM software that provides insights on missed calls, incoming calls and outcoming calls. Its real-time dashboards showcase call handling time, waiting time, response times, and other call center key metrics. With these insights, you can analyze agents' efficiency and support or adjust their workload, preventing agents from burning out.

More than tracking, you can analyze customers’ sentiment right after the call, allowing agents to track call outcomes. These insights are equally helpful for a supervisor to analyze agents’ performance and train them accordingly.

Features:

• Performance analytics
• Unified callbox
• Compliance management

Pricing

RingCentral is a WFM software that helps businesses forecast call volumes and utilize AI to optimize agent schedules accordingly. It offers omnichannel support, where you can route customer inquiries directly to the appropriate agents, improving response times and overall service quality.

Features:

• Automated scheduling
• Omnichannel routing
• Performance tracking

Zendesk enables accurate forecasting based on ticket volumes and facilitates the efficient scheduling of support agents. While generating a schedule, you can select the time frame it should cover. It will also highlight whether there is sufficient staff to align with the predicted call volume.

Additionally, Zendesk is an agent-centered tool where agents can manage short-term schedules, including trade shifts with each other and time off requests. It offers an agent schedule app known as Zendesk support that summarizes all your agents’ requests, including the date, time, and reason.

Features:

• Forecasting
• Scheduling
• Agent-time tracking

Dialpad's Workforce Management (WFM) technology offers detailed performance reports that encompass both human and AI metrics, focusing on productivity and behavioral trends.

You can create shift patterns and plans from scratch based on your agents' abilities and requirements, and adjust the strategy as your business evolves. Dialpad automatically allocates shifts weeks in advance, ensuring a well-balanced working schedule and generating insights for the future.

Features:

• Intuitive shift planning
• Multi-time zone management
• Global planning

Five9 is the best automated WFM solution that utilizes AI-driven forecasting. It enables managers to accurately predict demand and assign shifts. It helps businesses adjust their schedules dynamically in response to unexpected call volume fluctuations or agent absences, ensuring operational efficiency.

Features:

• Reporting and analytics
• Forecasting
• CRM integrations

Nice CXone includes a workforce management module that uses AI to analyze past interactions and create accurate staffing forecasts. The module also automatically creates optimized agent schedules to ensure the right agents are available when needed.

Additionally, Nice CXone offers patented AI and machine learning technology to optimize staffing and help meet service-level agreements.

Features:

• Automation and AI
• Analytics and reporting
• Forecasting

Nextiva offers flexible scheduling options to adjust work schedules and change the kinds of customer interactions employees handle. You can even manage shifts across different locations to meet the changing workflow needs.

With advanced intraday work scheduling, Nextiva helps supervisors track agent efficiency to adjust their tasks and shifts within the same workday. It also incorporates gamification and recognition programs to boost team morale.

Features:

• Shift management
• Demand forecasting
• Employee engagement tools

Talkdesk utilizes artificial intelligence to generate accurate forecasts based on historical and real-time data. The software optimizes the scheduling process based on agents’ shift templates, break rules, agent skills, and KPI goals.

Generally, Talkdesk is an omnichannel call center that helps businesses handle customers across more than one channel in a single platform. It provides a complete real-time performance, which helps to monitor and compare actual agent behavior with scheduled activities. Also, you can customize dashboards and reports to analyze key metrics and make better decisions.

Features:

• Intelligent forecast
• Automated scheduling
• Analytics and insights

Verint WFM uses artificial intelligence to accurately predict call volumes and staffing needs, ensuring optimal resource allocation. You can view agent efficiency and identify areas for improvement to give high-quality service.

With Verint WFM, agents quickly approve schedule changes, shift swaps, time off, and task and channel switching through mobile apps.

Features:

• AI-powered forecasting
• Intraday management
• Real-time adherence monitoring

Aspect WFM is an intuitive WFM system designed to schedule, forecast, and track agents’ performance. It offers dynamic scheduling, which uses historical data and analytics to optimize staffing based on call volume needs.

Additionally, this system offers intra-day monitoring that provides real-time insights on agents' efficiency. It helps supervisors identify gaps, overlaps, or demand and quickly reassign roles, shift breaks, or bring in extra help as needed.

Features:

• Forecasting
• Scheduling
• Real-time management

Before choosing workforce management software, you must carefully consider your business needs and scalability to optimize productivity.

1. Business need: Considering the complexity of the business, determine whether you need better scheduling, forecasting, productivity, or real-time management.
2. Scalability: Ensure the software can adjust with increased workforce size, expanded locations, and evolving needs.
3. Ease of use: Choose the one that does not require coding or dense skills, allowing anyone to operate it efficiently after a few training sessions.
4. Compliance and security: Look for a solution that gives automatic updates for legal changes, ensuring you stay updated and compliant with labor laws.
5. Mobile Accessibility: Look for WFM tools that offer mobile access. These tools enable agents to view schedules, request time off, and receive notifications conveniently.

Workforce management software is an essential tool for call centers to optimize staffing and enhance productivity. It accurately forecasts and schedules to help businesses align the required number of agents with workload demand. You can also monitor agents’ performance in real time, and automation helps identify areas for improvement. When selecting the WFM solution, prioritize your business needs, scalability, simple interface, compliance, and mobile accessibility to support a modern, dynamic workforce.
 

The cost of a Workforce Management (WFM) system can vary significantly depending on the features, number of users, and whether it is cloud-based or on-premises.

Yes, workforce management is often a key function within HR, focusing on staffing, scheduling, and performance optimization.