Workforce Management — WFM
The right number of people, at the right time.
Verint Calabrio Workforce Management, implemented by Lambert Consulting. Workload forecasting, scheduling, real-time compliance—and above all, the configuration work without which no planning tool lasts three months.
The Real Issue
A contact center rarely runs into technical problems.
The schedule is off track. The solution is up and running, the queues are set up correctly, and yet Monday mornings are overflowing while Thursday afternoons are half-empty. This isn’t a problem with the phone system—it’s a staffing issue.
01
Scheduling is done in a spreadsheet
One person spends two days a month working on it; she’s the only one who knows how it works, and it stops working the first time she’s absent. No one can say how much lost time it costs.
02
The load is guessed, not predicted
We went through this again last week. End-of-month spikes, the marketing campaign, the first Monday back from vacation—we only realize they’re happening when we’re in the thick of them, and the service level plummets without warning.
03
Discrepancies are noticed after the fact
The following month, we learned that the breaks had been rescheduled and that three officers were in training during the peak period. At that point, there was nothing left to correct—only to explain.
What the tool does
Six features you use every day.
The catalog includes even more. Here are the ones that really make a difference in your workweek—and the ones we'll have you work on first.
Workload Forecast
The model learns from your history: seasonality, underlying trends, and sudden spikes. You’ll know how many calls to expect—and when.
Automated Planning
Schedules are built based on the forecast and your rules: contracts, skills, languages, breaks, part-time work, and locations.
Adjustments made throughout the day
The day never goes as planned. The tool suggests solutions for the moment: reschedule a break, open a queue, or call in backup.
Real-Time Adherence
The gap between the plan and reality becomes apparent the moment it widens—not in the following month's report.
Agent Portal
Employees check their schedules, swap shifts, and submit their requests on their own. Half of the supervisor's emails disappear.
Quality and Performance
In addition to planning, the same company handles quality assessment, conversation analysis, and performance monitoring.
Our share of the work
The tool doesn't do anything on its own. Here's what we do with it.
A workforce management tool that’s set up incorrectly is worse than no tool at all: it produces inaccurate schedules with the authority of software. It all comes down to data import, the rules, and what your teams do with that information on Monday morning.
01
Data Mapping and Re-entry
It all starts with your call history. We retrieve it from your contact center, clean it up, and determine whether it’s usable: a forecast based on incomplete data is an inaccurate forecast, and it will remain so.
This is also the time to quantify the current situation: how many hours are currently spent on creating schedules, and what the costs of deviations are.
What We Deliver
- An overview of your historical data, including what's missing and how to fill in the gaps
- The scope of the figures: lines, sites, languages, and number of employees involved
- A Proposal for the Project: Scope, Timeline, and Deliverables
02
The rules—that's where it all comes down to
Scheduling isn't an algorithmic problem; it's a problem of constraints: maximum durations, rest periods, breaks, part-time schedules, skills, languages, rotations, locations, and state holidays.
We translate your actual rules—those in the employment contract, those in the collective bargaining agreement, and those that no one has ever written down but that everyone follows—into parameters that the tool adheres to.
What We Deliver
- The policy manual, drafted and approved in collaboration with you and the human resources department
- Parameterized forecasting models, row by row
- Scheduling Templates and Coverage Scenarios
- An experimental game: a real week replayed and compared to what actually happened
03
Integration with your systems
That’s our other line of work, and it’s what sets a contact center integrator apart from a license reseller: we know where the data comes from, because we’re the ones who laid the foundation.
Connection to the contact center — Luware Nimbus, Dynamics 365 Contact Center, AudioCodes Voca, Anywhere365 — to the phone system Teams, the directory for user identities, and Human Resources for absences.
What We Deliver
- Inbound traffic: volumes and processing times, as reported by the contact center
- Identities and rights, backed by your directory Entra ID
- Communication with Human Resources: Absences, Time Off, and Training
- The interface specification for each workflow, documented and submitted
04
The seesaw, and the people
A planning tool affects people'sschedules. This is the most sensitive issue in a company, and it's where projects fail—never because of technical issues.
We train the planners and supervisors first, then the agents, and we run both systems in parallel until trust is established. The old scheduling system remains in place until the new one has proven itself.
What We Deliver
- Training for planners and supervisors, using your own data
- A Quick Reference Guide for Employees on the Self-Service Portal
- Rollout by waves, row by row, or site by site
- The contingency plan, drawn up before the first transition
05
Continuing with the same people
A forecasting model becomes outdated: volumes change, a marketing campaign alters consumer habits, a new channel opens up. Without maintenance, the tool becomes nothing more than a spreadsheet with a nice interface.
We review the model at regular intervals, adjust the rules when yours change, and remain available. The engineers who set up the tool are the ones who respond.
What We Deliver
- A periodic review of the forecasting model and its accuracy
- Second- and third-level support, with a written response time
- Scheduled version updates and an explanation of what's new
- Gradual expansion: quality, conversation analysis, performance
The Schedule
Four beats, and a duration that’s given to you in advance.
These time frames apply to a contact center with about 30 agents, about 10 queues, and one location. They are approximate: the actual figures may vary, and they are determined before work begins.
Time 1
Frame
Reviewing the background, scope, and rules to be established. The only time that costs you nothing: it leads to a proposal.
1 to 2 weeks
Time 2
Configure
Forecasting models, scheduling rules, connections, and a simulation run over an actual week.
3 to 6 weeks
Time 3
Toggle
Training proceeds in parallel with the old schedule, then transitions in phases with a fallback plan.
4 to 8 weeks
Time 4
Hold
Review of the model, support, version updates, and expansion to include quality and analysis if desired.
Service Agreement
Why Choose Us
We don't sell a license. We know the technology behind it.
Workforce management relies on the data generated by your contact center: call volumes, handling times, queues, and skill sets. A vendor who isn’t familiar with this layer will provide you with a tool that’s connected to data they don’t understand.
We integrate the contact centers themselves — Luware, Dynamics 365 Contact Center, AudioCodes Voca, Anywhere365—and the telephony platforms Teams that support them. When the forecast is off, we know where to look.
What's included
- A single point of contact for the contact center, telephony, scheduling, and planning.
- Thirty Years of Voice Projects in French-Speaking Switzerland, from the Historic Exchange to the cloud.
- On-site teams: Renens, Sion, Châtel-Saint-Denis. No one opens a support ticket from the other side of the world.
- A recording by the same label: Verba is part of Verint; both the planning and recording may be handled by the same company.
- Federal authorization for staffing services since 2018: We can also assign a scheduler to your location on a temporary basis to provide additional support.
About Planning
This is where workforce management comes into play.
Planning is only meaningful when it’s connected to everything else. Here are the building blocks we’re laying, and we know how to build on them.
Let's talk about it
Send us a week's worth of your data. We'll show you what we can learn from it.
We’ll prepare a quote free of charge—covering scope, workload, timeline, and deliverables—with no obligation on your part. And if you provide us with a sample of your call history, we’ll show you the resulting forecast before you sign anything.