Workforce Management 101: The Invisible Engine of Customer Experience

Workforce Management (WFM) is one of the most critical—and misunderstood—functions in Customer Experience.

In the first episode of the CX Roundtable Workforce Management Series, host Sarah Caminiti sits down with Arlyne Pardo, a seasoned WFM professional, and Dan Smitley, founder of a workforce management consulting practice, to break down what WFM actually is, why it matters, and how it quietly shapes customer experience, employee wellbeing, and leadership decisions.

This conversation strips workforce management back to its foundation: understanding demand, matching it to real human capacity, and responding when things inevitably change. From forecasting and scheduling to real-time adherence and cross-functional collaboration, this episode explains how WFM works in practice—and why so many CX problems are actually capacity problems in disguise.

You’ll hear why workforce management isn’t just an operations function, how it impacts agent burnout and attrition, and why leaders must stop treating “do more” as a strategy. The discussion also explores the human ripple effects of WFM decisions, including how schedules, staffing gaps, and response plans affect frontline teams and the communities they belong to.

If you lead customer support, contact centers, CX operations, or people-driven teams—or if you’ve ever struggled with staffing, wait times, SLAs, or burnout—this episode will change how you think about capacity, planning, and leadership.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• What workforce management (WFM) actually is—and what it isn’t
• The difference between forecasting, scheduling, and real-time management
• Why capacity planning is a leadership responsibility, not an admin task
• How poor workforce management drives burnout, attrition, and poor CX
• The role of WFM in supporting supervisors, agents, and cross-functional teams
• Why “balance” isn’t the goal—and response is
• How data, communication, and psychological safety intersect in WFM

Who This Episode Is For

• CX leaders and customer support leaders
• Contact center managers and operations leaders
• Workforce management professionals
• Founders and executives scaling service teams
• Anyone responsible for staffing, capacity, or service delivery

About the Series

This four-part CX Roundtable WFM Series explores:

1. What workforce management is
2. Why it matters for cost, consistency, and people
3. What “good” actually looks like in WFM
4. How WFM becomes a strategic partner to the business

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to the CX Roundtable

01:22 Meet the Experts: Arlyne and Dan

04:14 Understanding Workforce Management (WFM)

12:18 The Role of Real-Time Adherence (RTA)

17:19 Balancing Historical Data and Real-Time Variables

21:51 WFM and Operations: A Collaborative Effort

26:53 Tools and Technology in WFM

28:00 Exploring Workforce Management Tools

29:19 Transitioning from Excel to WFM Systems

30:54 Scaling Workforce Management Teams

33:11 Handling Staffing Challenges and Forecasting

42:02 Personal Journeys into Workforce Management

48:34 The Future of Workforce Management

51:50 Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the CX Roundtable
• 1:22 Meet the Experts: Arlyne and Dan
• 4:17 Understanding Workforce Management (WFM)
• 12:18 The Role of Real-Time Adherence (RTA)
• 17:23 Balancing Historical Data and Real-Time Variables
• 21:51 WFM and Operations: A Collaborative Effort
• 26:50 Tools and Technology in WFM
• 28:04 Exploring Workforce Management Tools
• 29:21 Transitioning from Excel to WFM Systems
• 30:52 Scaling Workforce Management Teams
• 33:11 Handling Staffing Challenges and Forecasting
• 42:04 Personal Journeys into Workforce Management
• 48:18 The Future of Workforce Management
• 51:53 Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Transcript

[00:00:00]

Introduction to the CX Roundtable

Sarah Caminiti: Welcome to the CX Roundtable. I am Sarah Caminiti. This is a really cool moment for us at the CX Roundtable because this is our first official series and it's going to be a series on WFM or workforce management and, um. I don't know very much about this at all because this isn't something that when you're scaling teams from scratch, you give that much thought to.

But the more I learn about it, the more I think I probably should be giving it more thought and, uh, understanding all of the different spaces that CX exists within an organization, regardless of size, um, is. Kinda the point of this entire round table project. It's, it's uncovering little, little hidden spaces that, depending on what industry you're in, you may not know about or may know about, but feel really nervous to ask questions about because you feel like you should know what it [00:01:00] is.

Um, and so this is kind of my, my chance to learn from experts and meet great people. And this episode is, is so cool because it is two people that. Know each other very, very well. Two people that welcomed me into a space, uh, a few weeks ago. And we met for the first time and I immediately knew we were all kindred spirits.

And, uh, they were kind enough to, to gift me with their time today, uh, to, to talk about this and let me pick their brain. So let me get this started here. Um, 

Meet the Experts: Arlyne and Dan

Sarah Caminiti: I'm going to first. Pass this over to Arlyne who is going to, uh, to just give us a chance to get to know her.

Arlyne Pardo: everybody. Uh, my name is Arlyne. I'm based in Panama. I'm a WFM professional with. years plus experience. I'm passionate about growth and development, which is sometimes kind of weird on the WFM space regarding the growth on the roles that we have, but we are gonna dig on that a little bit later.

So, yes.

Sarah Caminiti: [00:02:00] Awesome. Yes. I'm so, so happy that you're here. And what you just said is something that I'm really, really excited to get into because I do feel like growth and managing this space, you have to know what you're doing or at least be intentional with it, uh, so you can get set up for success. Um, but as we've seen with anything really in cx, kind of talking about a lot of these little bits and pieces, often.

Cracks start to emerge and then you start to see other areas of focus and, uh, and so I'm, I'm just super pumped to, to dive into it. And then we also have my, my boat ride partner extraordinaire. Uh, Dan, please introduce yourself.

Dan Smitley: Yeah, happy to be here, y'all. Uh, Dan Smitley. I am the founder and principal consultant for two three Consulting. Um, it's a w fm focused consulting organization trying to help organizations just elevate what the practice is. Um, so trying to go from zero to one or one to two. Happy to help there. In previous roles, I've been a director of workforce management. Um, I got a few years on Arlyne. I've been around in the contact center space for over 20 years now. And, uh, almost all of that inside of workforce management, I would say probably like the first. or so I was doing WFM and didn't even realize it was called that, like I was, I was doing a discipline that was called something very different in the organization. Um, and so it wasn't until like halfway through my career that I [00:03:00] realized, oh, this is a thing. Oh, there's a whole and there's a whole society. There's a whole thing here. So happy to share that knowledge. So maybe other people get up to speed a little bit faster than I did.

Sarah Caminiti: I feel that in my bones. I feel like there's been so many times, especially when you're in the weeds with things that you don't, uh, lift up your head and. Breathe for a second and look around at the community and see how other people are doing it and how similar it is to, to what you're doing. I mean, when I started in startups, you know, I was a part of all of these little Slack communities, but never really went there because.

You have to be vulnerable to, to, uh, ask for help and to receive help and to even think about what you're doing in a way that's like, it's just me that's dealing with all of this stuff. It's like, but it's not. And uh, and so once you start to ask questions and start to. Give yourself permission to, to breathe and to, to make that space to explore in a community setting.

It is wild how often you [00:04:00] realize, oh, wait a second. This thing that, like I've built my entire career on, there's actually like an entire industry related to this that. I just thought that I was making this up as I went along. And, uh, there's something so validating in that and freeing in that because now you have tools, now you have books, now you have resources, now you have people that you can lean on.

Um, so, um, that's so cool. That's very, very cool. 

Understanding Workforce Management (WFM)

Sarah Caminiti: I think the most important question to get this thing going is what is WFM and uh, and. How, how, how does it work? Um, I'm gonna start with, with you, Dan, about, uh, to answer that question.

Dan Smitley: Um, maybe you shouldn't start with me. I, I've been doing this for 18 years. My wife still isn't quite sure what I do. I think that is just the, the, the curse of workforce management. Um, the simplest way to think about it is that we. Are the team that's tasked with understanding the customer interaction, demand and matching it against the frontline, we'll call 'em agents, schedules to that demand, [00:05:00] then the management of those two variables when we get it wrong, 'cause we're gonna get it wrong.

So it's, we're trying to figure out are people interacting with us, what kind of resources do we need to interact with them? then how do we adjust. to when we get it wrong.

Sarah Caminiti: That sounds like a very data heavy type of space with you have to afford yourself. The opportunity to fail too, which must be a, a scary mindset to, to get yourself in. But you're definitely not gonna get it right the first time. And, uh, you have to learn from each data point of when things kind of dip or when it like lands so perfectly.

So you can see was this just a fluke? Uh, or is this something reproducible? Um, Arlyne, do you have anything that you'd like to share about, about what this industry is?

Arlyne Pardo: Well, it's, it can be a, uh, applicable to many verticals, like from the healthcare financial. Like you take, if you think about it, like we basically plan who works [00:06:00] what shift or when, depending on the work. That is available. Right. And on real time, we need to be able to shift trying to like go back to the plan or if the plan was not accurate as it was it was supposed to be, then how we can, redirect this to be a success.

A success. Yeah.

Sarah Caminiti: That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. And I like that you brought up the different industries too, 'cause I think that that's a really important thing. To acknowledge. Dan, do you have something to add?

Dan Smitley: I was just gonna say it's, we are gonna obviously talk about cx, but I think. What I've seen and, and from workforce management is the really mature organizations, the really mature WFM teams actually will shift their definition of customer. So I know in this context what we're talking about is we're thinking of external customers, but internally, right?

We are needing different teams to give us content to do our work. Accounting is is, you know, waiting for [00:07:00] sales to produce something. Product is waiting for, right? There's all of these internal teams. That's work that has to be done. And there's some sort of guessing that's happening as to how much work is it and how many people do I need to do the work. So just kind of to, to be able to speak to it broadly. Workforce management is front office and back office. Anywhere there is work to be done, A guess to be made at how much work and then another guess as to how many people do we need to do that work. That's us. That's workforce management.

Sarah Caminiti: Oh, like that makes. Me think a lot about the struggle to get headcount, the, the struggle to have the staffing that you need. And I'm curious, and I know this, this is kind of deviating from our original plan, but welcome to the CX Roundtable. Uh, but uh, but when it comes to. To advocating for headcount and trying to articulate it to the powers that be, that are going to, okay.

It is WFM usually the place that approves headcount, or are you kind of [00:08:00] like in between? Like what role do you play in in getting people what they need?

Arlyne Pardo: I believe it depends, uh, talking from the BPO experience, uh, you can have so. Clients that will approve your headcount and you need to go back to them and say, what will be their service levels? Like, what you can achieve with that pool of people that you are approving me. And as well, you can calculate how many people do you need and take that back to the client.

Have a conversation why you need. 100 people not 20 to have the job done and like in a certain way have that negotiation to get that approved. So from a BPO standpoint, it depends a lot.

Sarah Caminiti: ​That's like an intense role [00:09:00] to, to be that negotiator. I mean, even like for someone that works in small companies where everybody knows everybody, having those sorts of conversations are so layered and. Uh, and, and it doesn't matter, you know, like everyone's kind of speaking their own language and they have their own goal at the end of it.

And that must be such a, an extraordinary opportunity to, to have language at your disposal that, that you can use to connect with all these different spaces and, and build. What needs to be built because you are put here in this role within this company to show what is needed in order for things to run at the level that that they need to be run.

Is that an accurate understanding? Dan? I.

Dan Smitley: I think it can be. So what you're describing there is, and then [00:10:00] that is skilled in translation, skilled in kind of holding the middle space amongst a lot of teams. And I would say the good WFM teams can do that. Yes. I think there is a lot of WFM teams that will simply drop off a spreadsheet and go the other direction.

Right. And so I think Arlyne was spot on saying it depends a lot of by client by.

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah.

Dan Smitley: uh, sector, by whatever. Um, some organizations might have WFM teams that simply say, you need 20 people goodbye. And, and people are, well, And how, what happens if we get NI 18 versus 25? Can we have a discussion?

They're like, no, it's 20. But I think the good w fm. They sit in that middle space and they get really curious about why is marketing want to do what they're doing? When are they gonna be dropping their campaigns? Where, what is it that we're trying to accomplish? And, and, and how can my team support marketing?

What does it look like for WFM to support operations? What does it look? And [00:11:00] then to be able to try to play that translator to be able to say, I don't think we can do what marketing wants because operations has this other thing, but a compromise might look like. X, Y or Z and And it's again, you said it, it's very data driven.

Absolutely. a lot of that data isn't in spreadsheets. A lot of that data is personalities, it's relationships, it's their focus, it's their directions. And the more we can get that data as well, the better we can play that middle person translator, the better. I think we can help drive schedules and volume alignment.

Sarah Caminiti: Just, it's like to have this role where your skillset is so much in negotiation. Um. That was, that's so unexpected. That's not what I, I expected to, uh, kind of have, be at the root, such a very specific type of person to be able to do this well and to, to thrive in it and to, to empower people to advocate for their needs as well.

Because you are. You're [00:12:00] working in tandem with them. You are a partner to them. So it's, it's like, okay, you've got this team that's struggling. Now you work with the WFM team to kind of understand. Why this is happening and, and how can we leverage that data to get you where you need to be. And so that's, that's really cool.

And I think that, I mean, I could go down 75 rabbit holes about this, but, uh, let's pause for a second and go back to some foundations here. Um, and so. 

The Role of Real-Time Adherence (RTA)

Sarah Caminiti: Arlyne, when you strip all of this down, how would you explain things like forecasting, scheduling and RTA, I don't even know what RTA is in a way that non WFM leaders will finally start to understand.

Arlyne Pardo: I will go with an example, like on real life, like if you go to the. Um, drive through, we calculate the persons that needs to be there on shift to support your order and get your hamburger within one minute. That's what we do. Like, or if you are on a bank [00:13:00] doing the line to get, uh, support, how many people do we need there to, you don't have to wait like. 30 minutes in line to get some information about your account. Something like that. That's how I try to explain it on real life, because if I'll say something like, oh, we use airline, or we use this calculation, or like as soon as I say, like I work in a contact center, they say, oh, you take calls. So try to like. Come with a simple but powerful, like a scenario that I can explain to people so they understand what I do.

Sarah Caminiti: Oh, I think that that's super smart because you're right. Uh, and, and what you just said about context centers, it's funny, I've been thinking a lot about context centers lately and, and how. Interesting of an environment. It is. And when you really strip it back, it's like this is an entire organization whose purpose is to help customers [00:14:00] and to service these customers.

Like all of these different roles are all here for like the same purpose to, you've got these agents that are talking to customers, how can you. Best facilitate this in, in a way that that makes sense to the agents, to the companies, to, to the customers. And, uh, so just so that I kind of understand, forecasting is planning for the future.

So, you know, holidays are coming and you know that this was the volume last holiday season. Therefore you need to increase for this period of time, or know that on Mondays at two o'clock there's always a spike. And so we need to add extra people there during this time to support that workload. But then scheduling is the actual act of taking the people that you have that are trained and and are actively working.

Um. At a call center for example, and scheduling what their, their hours are gonna be when, when, what their shifts are gonna be. Um, and then there's the other piece that, that I still have no clue of. The, the RTA Dan Dan, [00:15:00] did I get that first chunk right? And can you, uh, can you help me with, look at that 15 minutes in?

That's 'cause you guys are so good at what you do.

Dan Smitley: It was spot on. I would say the forecasting can be as simple or as granular as you want it to be. So maybe we're simply saying how many calls come in on a Tuesday versus a Wednesday? I think that's an approach could be how many calls are we expecting in, or tickets are we expecting in May versus June, right?

It can be this nice high level, maybe we're thinking about staffing models. Um, but it can get granular. Trying to figure out, well, how many calls and what's the average handle time gonna be and how much shrinkage might we have? So that's a term that we're gonna use quite a bit of, basically how much extra stat are we going to lose because of training or because of break time or because of call outs and absenteeism.

So there's these, this is the work, this is how many people we think need to do the work, and then this is actually how many people we need to schedule. We know we're [00:16:00] gonna lose for a variety of reasons. Spot on realtime adherence or realtime analytics, or realtime is around management of the agents. From a schedule and a volume forecast. So again, different teams, different environments are gonna look at this differently. Some people are going to have RTA people focused on downtime. This particular client pipe, you know, to is, is, is broken. Oh God. Send out an alarm. So before it even knows about it, RTA is already watching the state of all of the agents, they see everyone go off. They know within seconds they'll see. Although the agents are no longer logged in, we see the volume as it's coming in real time. We're seeing it and all the calls just drop. We see it before it will likely see it. Right. So RTA is monitoring, what are the agents currently doing? This very second. How many calls are currently in. then how does that compare to our understanding of what should be happening right now? So is volume coming [00:17:00] in higher or lower than we were expecting? Are agents logged in appropriately? Are they in and after call work? And appropriately, are they on break appropriately? What, what's going on and how do we need to manage this moment, this very second?

And how do we need to adjust the next minute, for the next hour, for the, for whatever that is? Intraday, RTA is only looking at today right now.

Sarah Caminiti: Okay. 

Balancing Historical Data and Real-Time Variables

Sarah Caminiti: And so then that complexity and, and that responsibility is great in order for an organization to actually function properly, but how do you balance that historical data with that, those unpredictable variables like you were just describing?

Dan Smitley: I don't think balance is the right word. It's it, I think it's probably How do you respond? Right,

Sarah Caminiti: Okay.

Dan Smitley: I don't think there is a balance of like, well, we have historical, we have real time. We,

Sarah Caminiti: Mm-hmm.

Dan Smitley: we. So have historically we make our [00:18:00] predictions and then we've got contingency plans, or we have standard operating procedures, or we've got communication paths that we take that says when variability breaks, right?

When we, when we go off path, when we go off course, what do we do? Well, when the this goes, you contact it. this agent's not doing what they need to be doing, you contact the supervisor When the volume is blowing up, as long as it's within 6%, you do nothing at 7%. You take this first step at 13% over forecast, you take these steps at, right?

So you build out all of these contingency plans that say, this is how we respond. I think in your, in your environment though, Sarah, kind of growing up in startups, you don't have those standard operating procedures, the variability every day

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah.

Dan Smitley: know, we don't have historical patterns. We don't know, and that's where I would say WFM done well is just about good communication. were talking a little bit [00:19:00] around the negotiation piece, and I think that's good communication. Real time monitoring is around good communication. we expect three times the volume that we normally do? Everyone's on training. Did we expect to do that? And maybe we didn't have a plan, but being able to reach out. To hear. Yeah, we knew that was gonna happen. Sorry, we didn't communicate with you. Here's when the people will be back on the phones. Um, that's, that's, it's how you respond. And do you have the communication paths to be able to go to the right teams, whether it's proactive or reactively? Arlyne, I'm curious if you see it a little bit differently again, the kind of, it about balancing historic and that that unpredictable or is it something different?

Arlyne Pardo: think there could be like some scenarios, like scenario, worst case, the ideal one, and is how we react to them. I'm sorry, I was too inspired with how you describe the real time analysts. Like for me, they are the heroes during like the real time because. [00:20:00] Yes, we can forecast, we can do the scheduling, but they are the ones on charge of the plan to see if that's going as we plan or not, and how they come creative enough to shift it back to the original plan.

Like if I'm receiving more transactions than I was expecting. I ask quality to the quality analysts if they are trained on this line of business, and if they can help me to try to mitigate the calls or the chats that I have on queue, like how they come with this type of ideas as well. for me is like, yes, they will have some standard or SOPs or some guidance, as well. from their side is how they come creative and propose something different. Or they go back and circle back to the forecasting on a scheduling team. Like, Hey, do you know that every single [00:21:00] Monday I'm struggling? Can you help me with this? Like, have that capacity to speak up. Right. It's, it is not easy, like. Like to go back to your own team, circle back and say, I'm noticing this. I'm curious if we can add two people more into this shift because of this and that, for me, the real time, definitely they are heroes and they should be able to speak up. And that, I believe that translate as well into Dan's, uh, recently article about, uh, psychological safety.

Sarah Caminiti: 1000%. I think it's, it's making that. Space, it's, it's providing that, that foundation of. Everyone ha is here to do their job. And we have to trust that when they bring something to our attention, it's because they are skilled in what they do and, and they know that this is something that requires our attention.

Um, 

WFM and Operations: A Collaborative Effort

Sarah Caminiti: I think something that keeps popping up in my, my [00:22:00] head, gnarling, I would love to know your perspective, especially from like the BPO space, like working, like leading teams. Usually the team lead. Even when I've, I've led teams that are in call center esque like environments. Um, like you've got the team lead and that's the one that is monitoring all of these things.

That's the one that's kind of like keeping an eye on the agent's behaviors, their, their metrics, like all of those bits and pieces. Having, having the, having the, the tech stack to, to be able to have like an eye on, on everything that's going on. Um. But it sounds like a properly staffed and trained WFM team kind of takes over some, some of that role and, and so how do these two spaces work in tandem together?

Arlyne Pardo: Um, with a lot of communication and understanding for me, is that because if WFM is talking about just metrics like. How does that translate into a supervisor or a team lead or a coach? I make this supervisor understand what I need and why [00:23:00] I need that right away. It's not beneficial to me if I'm asking you that.

I need the agents back on the phones. But I'm not explaining you that I need them right now, like as well. Like that on when I need them and why I need them, like I need them now because I'm having 20% over of volume. That's why I need them back so they can understand me and not see me. Like I'm mandating that, put it back or not explaining why. Um, for me it's that and. It has to be a lot of respect because, the RTA for example, in this scenario, they can cross that fine line of talking to the agents or stuff like that because they will feel that we are surpassing our scope of work to calling Um. [00:24:00] it's more likely like suggesting as well to the supervisor to check on the agency if we are noticing something weird or this agent is not closing the chats on time, or this agent is spending much of the time on after call work if something's happening.

Like it, it, it depends a lot how the communication is between these two parties.

Sarah Caminiti: Makes a lot of sense. Dan, do you have anything from your experience about that?

Dan Smitley: So I think, think what you're discussing here. How does W FM interact with operations and, and,

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah,

Dan Smitley: maybe do they, they pull off of operations and I think in a, in a startup environment, you don't need WFM doing all of it. You don't, and you don't need them doing forecasting, scheduling and R-T-A-W-F-M could benefit a startup that's scaling by only taking one or two of those and just pulling it off [00:25:00] of the operations plate Way that I, tried to implement WFM in the past for, for startups is. We would prefer operations to be doing the people oriented coaching, supervising, connecting. And not to say that WFM isn't people centered, but let's let supervisors and team leads handhold and coach to performance let us spend the deep dive into the forecast that. Operations, you, you just don't have the time, right?

You don't need to be monitoring. If someone's in a CW or ox, we'll give you a re, we'll give you a report. You can see what's happening and you can follow up. Or if something significants happening, I'll flag you and you can talk to Bob about his, you know, auxiliary code time going too long. really about establishing what are the pain points that we're experiencing, operations, and how could a WFM team support that and pulling off some of that pain point 'cause. We don't have time to do the forecasting, and then we're, we're flying blind because schedules were static and they've been that way for the past two years, and we think we can do [00:26:00] something better, but we don't know what that can look like or spending way too much time just staring at screens and not enough time talking to people and, and w FM can help there as well.

Sarah Caminiti: It's just, it's such an interesting, it's such an interesting role in just the, the intentionality behind it of like understanding. What can happen if you give these supervisors the chance to actually just like devote their time to coaching, to being there with, with their team, being present, answering questions instead of what you see often where.

Folks are in their office, they're looking at their dashboards, they're, they're consumed with, with the data. And, and that disconnect starts to really start to, to grow and grow and grow. But if you have, uh, a partnership with the WFM space, then. You can give them that space to, to do what they were hired to do, which is lift up their team and, and get them to get the results that they [00:27:00] need.

Tools and Technology in WFM

Sarah Caminiti: And, and I'm, I'm curious to know from both of you, but I'll start with you, Dan, in terms of tooling and tech, like. Because obviously, I mean, not obviously, I hope that this is not all some crazy excel spreadsheet equation situation in nearly 2026. Uh, like it's how scrappy are you guys with, with what you need in order to do all of this incredibly complex work.

Dan Smitley: Yeah. Um. You would be surprised by how many spreadsheets are even in incredibly mature organizations. One of my frustrating Mo, one of the points that's most frustrating to me is someone will go out and buy a WFM software, then it does all of the bells and whistles. It's highly sophisticated and they still will say. It doesn't know our volume. Like we know our volume. We're gonna do the forecasting in our spreadsheets and then import those into the spreadsheet or the, we'll let it forecast. But schedules they, static. I mean, our [00:28:00] agents can't change their schedules ever. We are only ever gonna have this and. You'd be surprised. 

Exploring Workforce Management Tools

Dan Smitley: So, tooling, yes, there are WFM tools out there. Um, there are some that are small and scrappy and cheap and will simply get you from zero to one. There are some that, unless you're 10,000 seats, they're gonna look the other way because they're like me, we don't care about you like. we're the big fish here.

You're, you're, you're nothing to us Yeah, I think we all probably, I mean a few of the WFM professionals and know exactly which organizations I'm, I'm talking about with that. Um, but there's, there is tools out there and they can go the full spectrum. But yes, at the core, kind of what we always do, work and, and then if you are in a startup, you don't gotta go buy anything.

You can online, just search up. Call center calculator, LAN calculator. There is multiple free ones out there just simply to get you started and they'll put it, ask you to put in a few variables and it will say you [00:29:00] need 10 people. you can just run with that. There are free tools out there and there's Excel spreadsheets out there.

There are other tools that actually are just little Excel spreadsheet plugins that simply say, cool, you got Excel. We'll add in a little bit of functionality and just take you a little bit up. So it's a ton of options, but genuinely start with Excel and go as far as you can with that, because you'd be surprised by how far you can go.

Sarah Caminiti: Oh, that's really interesting. 

Transitioning from Excel to WFM Systems

Sarah Caminiti: What about you, Arlyne? Is it the same sort of scenario where you guys are, uh, Excel Masters?

Arlyne Pardo: ni? Um. Yes, you'll have like different files for different things, like a separate schedule, file, a separate one for the forecast, um, stuff like that. And when you decide to have a w FM system, then. Coming from Excel files, you could experience as well some resistant everybody's used to the Excel spreadsheets.

Like I used to receive my schedules on an Excel [00:30:00] spreadsheet. Yes, but now you have it available on the system. No, but I don't want to use your system. I want my Excel spreadsheet back so you can face as well that scenario that you are spending, you know, a lot of money on this WFM tool, but people wants whatever you had on the Excel prior, the. Getting this software into the software, or they want whatever is on the software that they can access to that still in Excel. So it's a very complicated situation.

Sarah Caminiti: I mean, change is hard and everyone reacts to change differently. That is a mantra that I say to myself all the time, whenever I'm in those very, very similar, uh, situations. Um. I I wanna just kind of pause here just for a quick second and, and before I've got a couple of other pivots to, to throw your way, but have, and because I don't know really the types of organizations that you both have, have really thrived in.[00:31:00]

Scaling Workforce Management Teams

Sarah Caminiti: How is it when. You're, you're working with an organization, you're, you're working with the WFM space, and you had mentioned all these different roles that exist within, within this, this function, but I'm guessing. You usually just start with one person that's, that's doing it all, and then you get to a point where you need to, to kind of expand.

What are the triggers, Dan, in your career that you've seen to, to get to that point of I need to add someone else. And what kind of a someone else do you add?

Dan Smitley: So if we go back to kind of the working definition of what workforce management is trying to forecast out your workload to be able to assume how many resources you need and what the schedules need to look like. To your question, you workforce, the workforce management team, right? If we're gonna advocate

Sarah Caminiti: That's very true.

Dan Smitley: we have to be able to say, well, why do you need two people? I need two people because my [00:32:00] workload is X and maybe it's only 60 hours and I'm myself, and I don't have a full time. So I then say, okay, I wanted a fulltime person, but I'm gonna take another 20 hours off of my operations team because we weren't. Doing RTA, now we will, or we weren't doing forecasting and now we will.

So the next step is really dependent upon the organization. It depends upon what that first WFM person is doing, how they're already supporting operations, and then how else can they support operations. The functionality doesn't change. Forecasting, scheduling, RTA, it's always those three pieces. Um. It's just how can we increase that to add more value to operations then we make the case, this is how many units of work I'm doing, how many forecasts I'm creating, how many schedules I'm creating, how often I'm looking at RT a. And the benefit of that is better alignment of resources or a faster response when volume is blowing up. Um, so it always depends, but you workforce, the [00:33:00] workforce management team.

Sarah Caminiti: That's such a good point. I mean, this is what you're good at. This is, this is what you are here to do to advocate for all these other spaces. Why, why would you not be able to advocate for yourself? It's a good test of whether your your system is, is working or not. If you're able to get that across the finish line, um, something.

Handling Staffing Challenges and Forecasting

Sarah Caminiti: That I keep thinking about in the back of my head, mostly because I used to work in call centers. That's where I started a lot of my, my cx uh, career, um, in different, different spaces. But if you are forecasting and scheduling, there are the human beings that are, are doing this work and they have lives and they have things that they need to work around.

And, um, an ideal schedule, I'm assuming, but, uh. But that can't always be something that you're able to, to give to them, um, because of the forecasting that you're doing to meet these needs. So like, how do you even have these conversations? Like, is it with the supervisor, is it, and then they pass it down?

[00:34:00] Like, how do you open the door of, okay, in two weeks we are expecting X amount. Of volume. We weren't expecting it beforehand. So like, it's kind of a last minute shift. 'cause we're noticing this trend and it's, it's growing and we need to really, uh, grab the bull by its horns. Um, like how do you even broach that?

Because I mean, is that just seems like a very difficult thing to have to navigate And, and Arlyne, what, what's been your experience for, for broaching those sorts of conversations? Because I'm sure you have to all the time.

Arlyne Pardo: Yep. Um, on that one. For me, it's like selling. The vision to operations, like if we are able to, for instance, there is a shift on the volume. There is a marketing campaign or something that will increase the volume. I need more hours than was anticipated. This is the amount of hours that I need. These are just lots where I need them, and if we are able to get that, the impact will be less [00:35:00] or we can have no impact.

It depends. And then trying to sell that. As a vision to operations. So they have the conversation with the agents and convince them to work on the slots that I need. if there is anything that I can do for them to, um, help to get that sort of, uh, I could add an additional break. Um, there is something that could be done as. Um, motivate the agents or something different, how we can support that. So they can have the agents, oh, I'm, no, I'm not gonna work because already my shift is too long and now you are adding me these two, three extra hours. I'm gonna be burned out or something like that. So how me as WFN can say like, okay, I need you to work this three additional hours, but um, the exchange, I could assign this break so you can breathe and keep going with the [00:36:00] work.

So, yes.

Sarah Caminiti: Well, that makes a lot of sense. That definitely makes a lot of sense. But what happens if you don't have the headcount for it and you're noticing the spike? Like, Dan, what have you seen in these sort of staffing situations? I.

Dan Smitley: I

The Human Element in Workforce Management

Dan Smitley: think the key is to be as transparent as possible with the data that we have. So we're getting a spike. We can't get the head count. We don't simply say we're going to be short. 10 people. You say the average wait time for our customers during this period will not be our standard or hopeful. 20 seconds. It is going to be a minute and a half, if everyone is comfortable a minute and a half wait time, we don't need to take any action.

Sarah Caminiti: Yep.

Dan Smitley: will see our abandon move from 2% to 6%, and if we're comfortable with our sales calls dropping at a 6% rate versus a 2%. We're fine. Right? And, and, okay, we're 10 short.

If we can get two more people, instead of it being 6% a [00:37:00] abandons, it's a 4% a abandons. Maybe we're comfortable with that. Like it's, it's, it goes back to that negotiating that you were referencing before. It, it is, it's, it's, we have a perspective, but it's also about just having an open conversation. We're very data driven.

We can tell you likely what's. Our best guess what is going to happen? if we can't get the headcount, we prepare everyone. This is gonna suck. We are going to come in way under what we typically do, and this is gonna be the impact to our customers. And then also, uh. the space between calls for all of our agents that are working are, is gone. And so all of those people are also gonna be burnt out. Just

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah.

Dan Smitley: to make sure that we're aware we've been 10 short now for a week. of our agents, on average get 0.5 seconds to breathe between calls. What do we think that's gonna do to our attrition? Right? Right. And to be able to have these open conversations.

So instead of it simply saying, we're 10 people short and we're the in, if we can humanize those numbers to some [00:38:00] extent, to be able to say, this is the impact on our customers, this is the impact on our employees, I. It just ha helps everyone have an informed conversation. Even if we can't get the headcounts, we at least are all on the same page that we're, we're signing up for a hard day or a hard week, and we all know that it's important.

So we're all gonna use our influence and impact that we can to get the 10 headcounts. So it's not just WFM pushing for it. We all see why we need to go for it.

Sarah Caminiti: So you have to. You have to get everybody to agree to the consequences. And that's, that's a really important piece of a lot of this. And I think people in CX, regardless of size of company, feel this all the time because it's so easy to say, do more, do more, do more, do more, do more. But you are able to say, if we do more.

We will be looking at this increase in call out. We will be looking at this increase of, of attrition and therefore we will need to have a ramp up [00:39:00] time of X in order to get back to the same capacity and to then be able to say, is everybody okay with this wait time being this number? Then you. The agents don't have that stress of, I'm not doing enough, I'm not doing enough, I'm not doing enough.

It's, you gotta take care of you. You gotta have that space. Like we acknowledge that we're putting you in a really tricky situation right now, and, and we know that we're asking a lot of you. Um, but, but there should be a light at the end of the tunnel. Like this is, this is not forever. We are working to try to solve this, but just in this very moment.

Things are gonna suck. And, uh, but it's not sucking because you're not doing a great job. It's, it's sucking because there are these other things that exist that are, it, it falls on your shoulders, unfortunately. And, and what an empowering type of conversation to be able to, to have, so that, that trickles down because like, that's at the heart of it.

It's, it's that pressure to, to do the [00:40:00] impossible that sits on a lot of these agents' shoulders.

Dan Smitley: For me, Lisa, it goes back to wfm supports operations. Maybe we're not the ones going and telling. Agents, you're doing everything you can. It's not you, it's this larger environment. Maybe we're not having those conversations, but because we've done the forecasting, because we've seen the math, we have been able to hand that over to operations who maybe has a better relationship with the agents, who understands each person.

And so for this guy. I'm gonna go and be like, dude, it's gonna be rough. You're gonna kill it. You're gonna, I know what you're gonna do. You're gonna increase your speed. You're just gonna crank through all of the calls, like this is your opportunity to shine. And then this person over here being like, I know it's gonna be overwhelming for you, you probably gonna need to take a couple extra breaths. And operations has those relationships to be able to customize it. it's because we have equipped them with the data to be able to have those conversations. Um, again, that's, that's, that's what we try to do. We try and [00:41:00] create the space to be able to have a more informed conversation around what do we think is going to happen?

What do we need to do to make it happen well, and how are we going to adjust when we get it wrong?

Sarah Caminiti: And how lucky are these organizations to have folks like the two of you thinking about things in so many different layers and then be able to construct a story that hits. Where it needs to hit with the right people and, and to have that be like a part of your, like, main focus of, of what your, your role is, is to, to tell these stories in, in ways that speak to the people that are receiving this, this data.

Um, because it can be really hard to. Be a leader and have to speak every single language of every single department to try to advocate for your team to have this partnership with WFM, to be able to leverage that data and build a story that gets you the support that you need or, or [00:42:00] the grace that you need, um, is.

Is pretty cool. And I keep thinking too about the math of it all, and I am just dying to know. 

Personal Journeys into Workforce Management

Sarah Caminiti: Arlyne, how did you get into this industry?

Arlyne Pardo: Like, um, I believe like everybody else, I started taking calls and then suddenly I saw the WFM team, um, on a higher stage at the contact center, and I was like wondering what those peoples are doing every single day. And I got the opportunity to get in and I fell in love, honestly. Um, because there is lot that you can do with the data from a MET perspective, but as well how much you can drive, like the wellbeing of the agents if you do the forecast and the scheduling, right?

Like for me is that maybe I have the impact. Directly into four people that report directly to me. So those four, uh, direct reports will have impact [00:43:00] on, who knows, eight more people and those eight into the agents and so on is so scalable. Like the way that that WFM can influence on this industry. Um, that is so inspiring.

Sorry. It's like.

Sarah Caminiti: Don't apologize. I mean, this is. The ultimate ripple effect, and, uh, it's no wonder you were drawn to it because you are somebody that wants to make a difference and you saw a window that would allow you to make a difference in a way that aligns with who you are and, and can reach. As many people as humanly possible.

So I mean, never apologize for that. That is so cool that, uh, that you were able to do it because it's, it's true with any job too. It's like. You are in control of, of how you approach this work and you are in control of, of what you want the impact to look like and to be able to approach this work as I'm [00:44:00] doing this because I want to make things better and easier and, and just.

Aligned with my values as, as much as humanly possible. And, and this is a really fantastic way for me to do that. Um, not everybody does that. And, and that's what makes, makes you special, Arlyne. And, and I love how curious you are as well, um, to, to understand the d. Areas of a business so that you can better collaborate with them and, and to take that time to build a relationship with Dan.

I mean, you are mentor and mentee so that you can have that support to build your career in a way that you're not head down in the weeds the whole time. You actually are able to look up and see what's going on and you're not alone. And, uh, and, and then you've, you're open to be on this call with, with me.

And I think that that's just. It makes, it makes me excited for, for the future of this industry because of people like you that, that are looking at things less of a let's optimize everything and make everything more efficient than everything already is. And, uh. Instead, it's, there's a person on the other end, and I wanna figure out how I can tell a story to support that person in the [00:45:00] best way that I can.

Um, and so that's, that's really, really wonderful. So thank you for, for, for being you

Arlyne Pardo: you.

Sarah Caminiti: and Dan. You've been on this journey for a long time. What made you jump on this train and stay?

Dan Smitley: Uh, my wife got pregnant. That is literally the reason, so. really is why, I mean by me, like my wife was pregnant with my, just to clarify, 'cause the way that

Sarah Caminiti: Thank you.

Dan Smitley: a little odd. Right. She was pregnant with our child, but we were, we were kind of a dual income in Columbus, Ohio and realized, you know, when she's going through pregnancy and on the other side of it, like not gonna be able to make rent.

Like we're not gonna be able to pay our bills with her not working. She had family up in Northeast Ohio and I had just joined the organization and I said, I know I've only been here like six months, but like, do you guys have anything in northeast Ohio? They said, [00:46:00] well, you're willing to drive like an hour, like our headquarters is there and you're really good with spreadsheets, um, maybe you'd like this command center thing. And I said, I'll take it, like whatever I need to do. Uh, did that commute for six years, I wanna

Sarah Caminiti: Holy moly.

Dan Smitley: Yeah, it was a lot, a lot of commute and it, and that was the organization where I'm like, it, they didn't even call it wfm, they didn't call it workforce. It was, I was in the command center and we were an outbound dialing organization. And so the difference was instead of waiting for it to come in, we had big buckets of work that needed to get done and,

Sarah Caminiti: Yep.

Dan Smitley: are we gonna get it done and when are we gonna get it done? How can we get it done efficiently? Um, so it's the same kind of

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah.

Dan Smitley: Um, but ultimately that is the reason why.

And so I always know how long have I been in workforce management is how long, how old is my kid? She is 18 years old. I joined WFMI think February, and she was born in [00:47:00] May. So I guess I'm coming up on close to 19 years now, and

Sarah Caminiti: Oh my gosh.

Dan Smitley: and it's, it started with spreadsheets, but honestly, like I, I have stayed exactly the reason why Arlyne was talking about it.

Like what I love. Is one. What are One of the primary reasons people leave an organization is 'cause of schedules, right? Like we can't align it to our lives. so workforce management typically isn't just creating a schedule, we're also managing it.

Sarah Caminiti: Yep.

Dan Smitley: come in early? Can they leave late? Can they have PTO off?

We're typically managing that from my perspective. And I don't hear a lot of people talking about it, but workforce management has one of the biggest impacts on communities than any organ, any team in an organization we're typically the ones that are going to decide whether parents get to go to recitals. Whether aunts get to go to funerals, whether people get off to be able to experience important holidays with their family units to be able to volunteer in their [00:48:00] communities. And I know it's, maybe over exaggerating it and maybe they'll

Sarah Caminiti: Oh, you're not.

Dan Smitley: it out, but. From my perspective, the ripple effect that Arlyne was talking about, it's not just the internal kind of agents are being impacted, not just the customers that are being impacted.

From my perspective, impacting communities. We're impacting people's ability to have meaningful lives outside of work because we're able to adjust. To demand and get creative and flexible. Small organizations, it's harder. Um, but large organizations, we can make a lot of wheeling and dealing. We can make a lot of negotiations so that people can adjust and be where they wanna be, which oftentimes isn't work.

Sarah Caminiti: Yeah. Oh my gosh. 

The Future of Workforce Management

Sarah Caminiti: This, this is making me so excited for the rest of this series because this was just the foundational stuff for, so that I could actually contribute slightly to, to this conversation instead of just reading things off of a, a good. Google Doc, but uh, but what's to come is, is. Going to be incredible [00:49:00] and, and Dan, I mean, I connected with you at ICMI and, and your thoughts behind psychological safety and how that plays such a huge role in.

In this w fm space, and like you said, the community itself is what we're gonna be looking into more in the, uh, in the next episode where we're looking at like, why does this matter? What are cost savings? What are consistent experiences for the customer, for the agent, but then also. Going back to that human ripple effect.

What is going on here and what control do you have and how can you leverage it? And then we'll be looking at what does good look like, which I think is something that like being someone that scales teams or builds foundations with teams, I've always like locked in on it doesn't really matter what type of.

Company, like what they actually are doing. I know what good looks like and I can produce that, uh, and, and scale that and, and I'm excited to know what good looks like [00:50:00] within the WFM space and also what good looks like in terms of. How you connect with the rest of an organization. Um, and then that ties us into the last, uh, the last piece of the series, how you're a strategic partner and all of these are things that it took so much willpower for me to not go down these rabbit holes today because I'm so excited to talk about them.

Um, but these are the toolkit pieces that, that really educate. People that are in the CX space on what WFM is, but also the round table has had such a cool opportunity to bring in like VPs of product to bring in, CEOs to bring in founders and, and having a part of this conversation at the round table be.

Around this, this very important piece for a company to, to, to scale, but also to align with their values and to be the type of company that, that they're proud of. Um, and thinking about that from a foundational level, when you have, when, when you are starting to scale or when you do get to a hundred [00:51:00] total employees, how does that leverage in there?

And what you both touched on too, about how it's not just working with. Managing schedules for agents. It's also project management. It's also time management for all of these different places. Like, this is our capacity, this is our capacity. How do we, how do we meet in the middle here? Um, this is a role that.

Has serious legs and, uh, and I'm, I'm excited to find out too what the future of WFM looks like for, for both of you because it's an exciting time of technology. Um, but it's also a scary time of technology and there's a lot of blind trust happening and, uh, and you can't really blindly trust AI in any capacity, but I would think, especially in this capacity because.

You hallucinate on something as important as staffing and, uh, that's a ripple effect that you weren't, uh, hoping to have. So this is just the tip of the iceberg. Um, but 

Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Sarah Caminiti: I did wanna just ask you both from a [00:52:00] foundational space, Arlyne, is there anything else that you really wanna make sure that, that we chat about in today's conversation?

Arlyne Pardo: Um, for me it's a part of the communication. Um, if we have that into consideration, building A WFM any organization like. We are, we don't shut down our ears for hearing what marketing, finance, or other areas or HR recruitment has to say we can have or make this a success for everybody, not just WFM, our agents, our support lines like to everybody.

Sarah Caminiti: Love that. I'm so glad that you shared that. What about you, Dan?

Dan Smitley: I've, I'm, I'm the same way. I've been chomping at the bit to go down different paths. I'm like, no. That's another conversation.

Sarah Caminiti: Soon?

Dan Smitley: I'll, maybe I'll just simply tee up the next conversation. Uh, we're talking about the foundations and we talked a lot about what, um, the, what a lot of times doesn't matter unless we have [00:53:00] a strong y Why does WFM even exist? Why do we think we can impact X, Y, or Z things? Um, and so honestly that's the conversation I'm excited to have. I think that's the. Foundational piece that we didn't talk about, but it's the next one. So I'll, I'll hold my tongue, but, um, I think we hit on what we needed to hit on for this particular conversation.

Sarah Caminiti: I'm so glad. Thank you too, so freaking much for coming on this journey with me, for being open to hanging out with me for multiple hours and for educating this community. Um, a. About how important this, this space is, and uh, I'm just really lucky to know you. So, so thank you both so very much.

Arlyne Pardo: Thank you.

Dan Smitley: Ditto.

Arlyne Pardo: Yes. Love it.

Sarah Caminiti: Yay. Well, I'll see you very soon and, uh, enjoy the rest of your day.

Arlyne Pardo: You too.

​[00:54:00]