Actionary Research

Navigating the Disruption: Balancing AI Integration and Workforce Engagement Management

May 17, 2024 / 7 min read

Summary

Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) is fundamental for managing employee productivity and satisfaction. WEM evolved from its predecessor, Workforce Optimization (WFO) and represented a shift in focus from purely operational efficiency to a more human-centered approach, emphasizing employee engagement and work-life balance. However, the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is disrupting this model, posing new challenges and opportunities for the WEM market. Landscape confusion and competing value propositions will significantly complicate procurement decision making.

Actionary Take: Failure to balance AI benefit with WEM principles will harm employee satisfaction and productivity for the next three years.

AI IS UNDERMINING THE CORE WEM VALUE PROPOSITION

The WFO market emerged from the need to unify previously siloed technologies, such as Workforce Management (WFM) for forecasting and scheduling, and Quality Management (QM) for performance tracking. This integration offered centralized administration and new cross-functional capabilities, such as performance-based scheduling – which helped ensure agents could take calls on topics they perform well on rather than what a theoretical skillset implied they should be. The shift from WFO to WEM brought a greater emphasis on employee wellbeing and engagement, focusing on the human element within the workforce. The proliferation of AI is shaking up the paradigm of where and why WEM functionality is potentially sourced.

AI use case proliferation is changing the market reality. The rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and CRM Customer Engagement Center (CEC) software markets has transformed the landscape. Customer service software vendors are providing advanced AI-based features like call summarization and knowledge retrieval, while also seeking new use cases for AI. This shift has led to increased interest in offering AI-powered automation of employee evaluation and coaching (i.e., QM), which provides greater efficiency and flexibility compared to a traditional manual approach. Several customer service software vendors are promoting this capability, making it easy for organizations to incorporate it into their existing customer service technology ecosystem.
Incomplete portfolios are diminishing the WEM value proposition. Most CCaaS and CEC vendors lack a viable in-house WFM capability. They typically partner with one or more WFM vendors who rely on rudimentary integrations to ingest the data required to fulfil scheduling and forecasting requirements. As the CEC and CCaaS vendors embrace intelligent QM there is a risk of undermining the WEM value proposition, which emphasizes centralized administration and seamless cross-domain workflows. For example, without tight integration between WFM and QM then it is impossible to facilitate capabilities like being able to prioritize coaching based on severity of need – is it ok for the agent to do the required training any time over the next month? Or ideally should it be done this week? Or perhaps it is essential the training is done before they start their next shift? Working together, QM and WFM can ensure this is effortlessly accommodated. Organizations that find themselves purchasing WFM as a standalone function, will perpetuate functional siloes and severely hinder efforts to maintain a unified and effective WEM capability – and associated value.

AI ADDS NEW VALUE TO THE PARADIM SHIFT

While AI is disrupting the traditional WEM model, it also opens new opportunities for greater alignment between QM and CEC/CCaaS platforms with an increase in associated value.

Elevating the broader cross domain value. There are numerous potential value add outcomes as WEM and CEC/CCaaS become more entwined. For example, with access to detailed QM agent performance data, CCaaS vendors can use AI to enable smarter call routing. By understanding which agents are struggling with specific call types, these calls can be rerouted until agents receive adequate training. This capability can improve customer satisfaction and reduce stress for agents. Alternatively, with tight integration to the WFM platform, during a call with a customer if it becomes clear the customer qualifies for an upsell the CEC process flow might not force the agent down that longer interaction path as it is aware the agent only has a few minutes left on their shift.
Exploring new AI-driven WEM opportunities. With AI accelerating the automation of customer interactions the role of “employee management” will inevitably shift. The same AI that is used to drive bots that service customers can also be used to assess the “digital employee’s” own performance and areas for improvement – i.e. QM for bots.In addition, the shift of task handling from high volume and low complexity to low volume and high complexity and expected move to a more proactive rather than reactive approach to support provision will require greater AI-based sophistication within WFM tools – to ensure agent resource remains correctly aligned to customer demand, which is the primary goal of WFM.
Allowing supervisors and managers to fulfil their role. The AI-based automation of traditional manual supervisory roles such as handling vacation requests, tracking attendance and conducting performance reviews will free-up resources to focus on more strategic initiatives rather than getting bogged down in precision-oriented duties. Finally, supervisors will be able to supervise and managers manage.

PLACE AN ELEVATED EMPHASIS ON THE VALUE OF WORKFLOW

Ultimately, the emphasis on employee engagement remains critical, but the way it is achieved is undergoing a significant transformation. While this realignment of employee engagement technologies poses challenges for leading QM and WFM vendors and WEM suite providers, it also creates new opportunities for organizations to leverage AI-driven insights and improve their customer service operations. Businesses must navigate this evolving landscape by evaluating their current solutions, exploring AI-driven features, and staying informed about market trends.

Don’t let your CEC or CCaaS vendor downplay WEM. Most CEC and CCaaS vendors will continue to seek easy-to-integrate WFM partner solutions to complement their emerging intelligent QM capabilities. However, the integration with these partners is limited, only facilitating a basic ability to ingest data to generate a forecast. Explore your vendor’s ambition to look beyond this rudimentary level of integration to enable value add capabilities such as those discussed above in this research. If there is no such ambition, sourcing WFM as part of a standalone WEM solution, that contains WFM and QM, from someone like Playvox or Calabrio might provide a greater value proposition. Weigh up the pros and cons of having QM either tightly integrated with your CEC/CCaaS or your WFM solution – which will provide more value? It is also worth noting that due to the complexity of WFM, inhouse development is unrealistic – history has shown that building WFM in-house is fraught with difficulties and often leads to failure and abandonment. Dismiss any CEC or CCaaS vendor’s roadmap claims of building their own viable WFM capability from scratch.
Don’t underestimate the importance of leading WFM solutions. Despite the WFM market being a mature domain the variation in sophistication across vendors is still significant. For example, the accuracy of forecasting resource requirements for asynchronous channels like WhatsApp and the ability to dynamically adjust staffing levels in real time through intraday management remain of questionable viability for many. Couple this with the shift from being an operational efficiency tool to a flexible employee engagement work/life balance tool and picking the right WFM vendor is not a trivial decision. There is still a healthy standalone WFM market out there with vendors like Surfboard, Assembled, Injixo and CommunityWFM each of which has different strengths that might align better to your needs so don’t be drawn into a simple tick-box decision offered by your CEC or CCaaS vendor.
But be mindful of the impact of AI on the landscape long term. It is inevitable that there will be a dramatic shift in the WEM technology landscape. This will benefit some vendors but be challenging for others to successfully navigate. CEC and CCaaS vendors like NICE, Verint and Genesys who have already embedded viable WEM functionality will gain mindshare due to the elevated awareness of this combined storyline, promoted by competitors who are still in their infancy. Leading WEM vendors will need to innovate sufficiently to remain relevant and they and WFM vendors will have to ensure effortless partnerships with CEC and CCaaS vendors. Inevitably, many will look to fashion a 2-3-year exit strategy as the market opportunity continues to recede. An awareness of their most fruitful strategic partnerships will give a clue as to the likely destination.