Workforce Engagement Management

Good morning everyone

So many of us have started playing with the capacity planning.  In the idea it was quoted as "What if".  Am unsure if anyone is reading the comments posted in the ideas now that it is released?

So we program the staffing requirements, create staffing groups, do up forecast.

WHERE in this new feature does What IF come into play?  I was thinking that we could create a schedule based on a forecast and it would put agents in where needed?  Is that something that will not work?

We have agents and fixed shifts however our groups need or want to know if shifts should be changed etc.

In the engage days there was a What IF and thought this is what this was supposed to role out?  Were we not correct?

Today it will tell you under capacity planning how many agents needed but does not create where those shifts should be correct?

Thanks

Shirley

#Workforce Management
#GeneralQuestion

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Shirley Harbers
NA
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Hi Genesys Team

Could we get some guidance please.  

It would be appreciated as we have been waiting for this feature for a very long time and it seems that there are things missing - could be user but it would be great to see some instructions.

Shirley

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Shirley Harbers
NA
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Hello Shirley,

Capacity Planning does not get down to the daily or interval level.  It is meant to be a long-term staff planning tool to help you determine your staffing requirements for up to 2yrs in the future and align them with your planned resources.  This will then help you plan for when and how many agents you may need to hire throughout those 2 years as well as any other staffing adjustments.  It does not, however, help you determine what days or intervals those agents should work.  Our WFM Scheduling will help with that. 

What-if planning in Capacity Planning refers to the ability to make any input changes to a Capacity Plan and immediately see the results of those changes.  Multiple Capacity Plans can be created with different inputs, such as New Hires, Shrinkage %, Attrition %, Volume, or AHT.  You can then compare the results of each.

I hope that helps.

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Belinda Herrera
Genesys, Staff Product Manager
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How would the scheduling help with that?  We have work plans etc that are fixed.  I tried building a blank schedule but of course that requires us putting in the agents.  Any other ideas?  Our center is trying to determine where it is most beneficial to put the agents and was looking for WFM to suggest (much like Engage where they actually had What if scenarios).

thanks

Shirley

------------------------------
Shirley Harbers
NA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-07-2025 13:16
From: Belinda Herrera
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

Hello Shirley,

Capacity Planning does not get down to the daily or interval level.  It is meant to be a long-term staff planning tool to help you determine your staffing requirements for up to 2yrs in the future and align them with your planned resources.  This will then help you plan for when and how many agents you may need to hire throughout those 2 years as well as any other staffing adjustments.  It does not, however, help you determine what days or intervals those agents should work.  Our WFM Scheduling will help with that. 

What-if planning in Capacity Planning refers to the ability to make any input changes to a Capacity Plan and immediately see the results of those changes.  Multiple Capacity Plans can be created with different inputs, such as New Hires, Shrinkage %, Attrition %, Volume, or AHT.  You can then compare the results of each.

I hope that helps.

------------------------------
Belinda Herrera
Genesys, Staff Product Manager
------------------------------

Can you create a future forecast, then create fully flexible shifts over your opening hours representing the different contracted hours, temporarily assign it to agents, and generate a schedule? Clearly you'd need to make sure no other generation was happening at this time, and depending on the parameters set, you might then need to do some tweaking with what the system suggests.

Or perhaps you can use shift bidding for this? Create the work plans you want to offer, and the system will tell you how many of each shift you need. You don't even need to open the bid to get these numbers so that might be more useful.

Just a suggestion to get you what you need.

------------------------------
Heather Henderson
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-07-2025 13:48
From: Shirley Harbers
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

How would the scheduling help with that?  We have work plans etc that are fixed.  I tried building a blank schedule but of course that requires us putting in the agents.  Any other ideas?  Our center is trying to determine where it is most beneficial to put the agents and was looking for WFM to suggest (much like Engage where they actually had What if scenarios).

thanks

Shirley

------------------------------
Shirley Harbers
NA
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 07-07-2025 13:16
From: Belinda Herrera
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

Hello Shirley,

Capacity Planning does not get down to the daily or interval level.  It is meant to be a long-term staff planning tool to help you determine your staffing requirements for up to 2yrs in the future and align them with your planned resources.  This will then help you plan for when and how many agents you may need to hire throughout those 2 years as well as any other staffing adjustments.  It does not, however, help you determine what days or intervals those agents should work.  Our WFM Scheduling will help with that. 

What-if planning in Capacity Planning refers to the ability to make any input changes to a Capacity Plan and immediately see the results of those changes.  Multiple Capacity Plans can be created with different inputs, such as New Hires, Shrinkage %, Attrition %, Volume, or AHT.  You can then compare the results of each.

I hope that helps.

------------------------------
Belinda Herrera
Genesys, Staff Product Manager

thanks Heather.  This sound promising.  So would you create i.e. work plans with no actual names i.e. test 1, 2, 3, and then build a schedule on those?  Have to admit I have not done this so any guidance would be appreciated.  The center knows they may be overstaffed and wants to know how to better utilize.

So we have day shifts and evening shifts and night shifts - center runs 24x7.  Is there an article or document on doing something like this?

So much appreciated.

Shirley

------------------------------
Shirley Harbers
NA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-08-2025 03:31
From: Heather Henderson
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

Can you create a future forecast, then create fully flexible shifts over your opening hours representing the different contracted hours, temporarily assign it to agents, and generate a schedule? Clearly you'd need to make sure no other generation was happening at this time, and depending on the parameters set, you might then need to do some tweaking with what the system suggests.

Or perhaps you can use shift bidding for this? Create the work plans you want to offer, and the system will tell you how many of each shift you need. You don't even need to open the bid to get these numbers so that might be more useful.

Just a suggestion to get you what you need.

------------------------------
Heather Henderson
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 07-07-2025 13:48
From: Shirley Harbers
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

How would the scheduling help with that?  We have work plans etc that are fixed.  I tried building a blank schedule but of course that requires us putting in the agents.  Any other ideas?  Our center is trying to determine where it is most beneficial to put the agents and was looking for WFM to suggest (much like Engage where they actually had What if scenarios).

thanks

Shirley

------------------------------
Shirley Harbers
NA


Original Message:
Sent: 07-07-2025 13:16
From: Belinda Herrera
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

Hello Shirley,

Capacity Planning does not get down to the daily or interval level.  It is meant to be a long-term staff planning tool to help you determine your staffing requirements for up to 2yrs in the future and align them with your planned resources.  This will then help you plan for when and how many agents you may need to hire throughout those 2 years as well as any other staffing adjustments.  It does not, however, help you determine what days or intervals those agents should work.  Our WFM Scheduling will help with that. 

What-if planning in Capacity Planning refers to the ability to make any input changes to a Capacity Plan and immediately see the results of those changes.  Multiple Capacity Plans can be created with different inputs, such as New Hires, Shrinkage %, Attrition %, Volume, or AHT.  You can then compare the results of each.

I hope that helps.

------------------------------
Belinda Herrera
Genesys, Staff Product Manager

For Work Plan Bidding, I would create suggested shifts but I would give them a clear naming function so you know what the system has suggested as the best options. Maybe prefix them with WPB so you can identify them? But you can also use existing work plans so you don't necessarily need to create new ones - this is really useful for those who have set contracts for their hours and you know you can't change them, so they can still be included in your plan.

You can find out more about the full process here, and this has further links to go through each step of the process: Work Plan Bids - Workforce Management

I hope you find it useful.

Heather

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Heather Henderson
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-08-2025 09:23
From: Shirley Harbers
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

thanks Heather.  This sound promising.  So would you create i.e. work plans with no actual names i.e. test 1, 2, 3, and then build a schedule on those?  Have to admit I have not done this so any guidance would be appreciated.  The center knows they may be overstaffed and wants to know how to better utilize.

So we have day shifts and evening shifts and night shifts - center runs 24x7.  Is there an article or document on doing something like this?

So much appreciated.

Shirley

------------------------------
Shirley Harbers
NA
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 07-08-2025 03:31
From: Heather Henderson
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

Can you create a future forecast, then create fully flexible shifts over your opening hours representing the different contracted hours, temporarily assign it to agents, and generate a schedule? Clearly you'd need to make sure no other generation was happening at this time, and depending on the parameters set, you might then need to do some tweaking with what the system suggests.

Or perhaps you can use shift bidding for this? Create the work plans you want to offer, and the system will tell you how many of each shift you need. You don't even need to open the bid to get these numbers so that might be more useful.

Just a suggestion to get you what you need.

------------------------------
Heather Henderson


Original Message:
Sent: 07-07-2025 13:48
From: Shirley Harbers
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

How would the scheduling help with that?  We have work plans etc that are fixed.  I tried building a blank schedule but of course that requires us putting in the agents.  Any other ideas?  Our center is trying to determine where it is most beneficial to put the agents and was looking for WFM to suggest (much like Engage where they actually had What if scenarios).

thanks

Shirley

------------------------------
Shirley Harbers
NA


Original Message:
Sent: 07-07-2025 13:16
From: Belinda Herrera
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

Hello Shirley,

Capacity Planning does not get down to the daily or interval level.  It is meant to be a long-term staff planning tool to help you determine your staffing requirements for up to 2yrs in the future and align them with your planned resources.  This will then help you plan for when and how many agents you may need to hire throughout those 2 years as well as any other staffing adjustments.  It does not, however, help you determine what days or intervals those agents should work.  Our WFM Scheduling will help with that. 

What-if planning in Capacity Planning refers to the ability to make any input changes to a Capacity Plan and immediately see the results of those changes.  Multiple Capacity Plans can be created with different inputs, such as New Hires, Shrinkage %, Attrition %, Volume, or AHT.  You can then compare the results of each.

I hope that helps.

------------------------------
Belinda Herrera
Genesys, Staff Product Manager

@Heather Henderson - This is exactly how I do it.  However, I do it overnight when I don't have to worry about someone putting in a time off request when they have the wrong workplan assigned. 

If I need to get shifts for a new hire class and I can't wait until they are loaded into Genesys, I move all the leaders and WFM staff into the MU, assign them the queues so they are in the planning groups and then run the fully flexible workplans for them.  It is not ideal, but it works.  

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Gina Palmer
Manager, Workforce Management
Papa, Inc.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-08-2025 03:31
From: Heather Henderson
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

Can you create a future forecast, then create fully flexible shifts over your opening hours representing the different contracted hours, temporarily assign it to agents, and generate a schedule? Clearly you'd need to make sure no other generation was happening at this time, and depending on the parameters set, you might then need to do some tweaking with what the system suggests.

Or perhaps you can use shift bidding for this? Create the work plans you want to offer, and the system will tell you how many of each shift you need. You don't even need to open the bid to get these numbers so that might be more useful.

Just a suggestion to get you what you need.

------------------------------
Heather Henderson
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 07-07-2025 13:48
From: Shirley Harbers
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

How would the scheduling help with that?  We have work plans etc that are fixed.  I tried building a blank schedule but of course that requires us putting in the agents.  Any other ideas?  Our center is trying to determine where it is most beneficial to put the agents and was looking for WFM to suggest (much like Engage where they actually had What if scenarios).

thanks

Shirley

------------------------------
Shirley Harbers
NA


Original Message:
Sent: 07-07-2025 13:16
From: Belinda Herrera
Subject: Capacity planning, What if

Hello Shirley,

Capacity Planning does not get down to the daily or interval level.  It is meant to be a long-term staff planning tool to help you determine your staffing requirements for up to 2yrs in the future and align them with your planned resources.  This will then help you plan for when and how many agents you may need to hire throughout those 2 years as well as any other staffing adjustments.  It does not, however, help you determine what days or intervals those agents should work.  Our WFM Scheduling will help with that. 

What-if planning in Capacity Planning refers to the ability to make any input changes to a Capacity Plan and immediately see the results of those changes.  Multiple Capacity Plans can be created with different inputs, such as New Hires, Shrinkage %, Attrition %, Volume, or AHT.  You can then compare the results of each.

I hope that helps.

------------------------------
Belinda Herrera
Genesys, Staff Product Manager

Good morning all,

We recently wrapped up a Genesys Consultation Engagement focused on all existing WFM features and concepts. Two key areas we reviewed were "staffing capacity estimation" and "agent resources scheduling optimization." We worked through both manual and automated methods, using published concepts standards from SWPP (Society of Workforce Management Planning Professionals) and advise provided by our Genesys resource.

During these exercises, we tested a number of methods for both capacity estimation and scheduling optimization. We used several manual calculator worksheets for capacity estimation to compare to the Genesys "Staffing Requirements" feature. We also developed an excel "scheduling calculator model" that allows for quickly entering in proposed fixed work plan configurations with historical shrinkage to compare against the exported Genesys schedules data for required staff. This allows us to quickly examine potential adjustments to staffing for voluntary agent schedule adjustment offers, recruiting and shift bidding. It also allows easy visualization of the required total agents with shrinkage which Genesys does not display in the scheduling feature. For example, we were able to demonstrate that the number and complexity of the existing work plan structure could be significantly simplified to align agents and line supervisors more effectively and reduce the complexity of the existing work plans for a 24/7 contact center handling voice, call backs, web messaging chat, email and SMS text to significantly fewer arrangements of day of week and time of day patterns. These new arrangements will be used in our next annual shift bid to completely re-align our agent and line supervisor scheduling arrangements. This will enable more consistent off queue activities for agents and line supervisors. 

In addition, we learned that yes, work plan bidding can be partially run to see how Genesys would propose to allocate agents to proposed work plans. We also learned that you can take production, published schedules, copy those schedules and make proposed adjustments, then export both schedule's data and compare the KPIs to see how much of a difference is forecasted between the changes. It is also possible to create temporary, test work plans, move agents into those new test and temporary work plans, then have Genesys run scheduling on the test work plans. This then allows for the same schedule data exports and KPIs comparisons. We then take the data and examine the impacts to 3 key stakeholder groups: the customers, the agents and line leads, and the business. We have since moved to using these types of processes for all proposed scheduling adjustments to validate assumptions before execution. 

To see how Genesys might allocate agents if work plan constraints are completely open, you can create work plans with minimal configurations that allow for very open potential shift possibilities and Genesys will generate "testing" schedules to compare to see how agents could potentially be arranged for more scheduling efficiency. 

Problems we have encountered so far:

1. Having to move agents into temporary "test work plans" and back is time consuming.
2. You can't fully test for all allocated agents if you don't have enough users to place into work plans. Dummy agents are required to fill out agent vacancies for these testing methods in Genesys. 
3. Genesys does not reflect the total agents required per interval with shrinkage (all shrinkage) in the scheduling feature. This is one reason we built our calculator. 
4. Genesys does not allow direct comparisons of different schedules generated for the same interval periods. To do this, generated schedule data must be extracted and manually analyzed outside of the application. 
5. Temporary agent moves in work plans and multiple unpublished schedules can cause some confusion for line supervisors that might not notice that the schedule they are reviewing and potentially updating/publishing is not meant for production. 

Genesys potential fixes:

1. Allow for a testing schedule generation feature that only requires allocating the number of agents per work plan instead of having to manually move the actual agents in production.
2. Enhance the scheduling feature to include data on total agents required on staff for the intervals, which accounts for actual historical shrinkage. Instead of only reflecting the "agents in seats" numbers, also include the "shrinkage" agent counts which represent expected scheduled and unscheduled shrinkage. 
3. Create a feature that allows direct comparison of different schedules for the same period to examine the forecasted KPI outcomes between each schedule to see how much of a difference will be expected for ASA, SL%, and Abandon Rates. Feature should display the differences and magnitude of change as well as use AI to summarize the potential outcomes, positive and negative for the three key stakeholder groups: customers, agents and line supervisors, and the business. 

We will be looking at initial testing of the new "Capacity Plans" feature starting this week.

I hope this helps. 

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James Starling
Member Service Center Quality Assurance Manager
Global Federal Credit Union
j.starling@globalcu.org
Anchorage, AK
United States
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