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  • 1.  Result of Programming with Secondary Skills

    Posted 20 days ago

    Hello!

    I'd like to start a discussion about best practices when dealing with agents who have secondary skills.

    For example, when you have bullsey routing in a queue, where you have agents that don't prioritize serving

    that queue (meaning you can't rely on them for 100% availability).

    How do you handle this type of situation when creating a schedule and achieving coverage results?


    #WFMConfiguration,BestPractices

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    Karine Alves
    Project manager
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  • 2.  RE: Result of Programming with Secondary Skills

    Posted 11 days ago

    Hi Karine, great question and honestly one that gives WFM admins more headaches than it should 😅

    The challenge here is that bullseye routing and WFM scheduling require some intentional setup to work well together. WFM sees all queue agents as available capacity, so if your secondary skill agents are not configured, your coverage looks great on paper, while reality tells a very different story at 2 pm on a Monday.

    The setup that actually works best is Bullseye Option 1, where agents have the same skills at different proficiency levels, rather than Option 2, where skills get stripped at each ring. Genesys specifically built Option 1 to stay compatible with WFM forecasting, so that is your friend here.

    Beyond that, the simplest mental model is to build your staffing targets as if your secondary skill agents are your safety net, not your foundation. If your primary pool can hit your service level on its own, you are in good shape, and your secondaries become a genuine buffer instead of something your schedule depends on. If you can only hit your targets by counting secondary agents, you are basically hoping the routing gods are kind to you that day 

    Also, worth reviewing your ring timeout settings. If secondary agents are being pulled too quickly, your WFM historical data starts picking up their handle time, which can affect forecast accuracy for your primary queue over time.

    Would love to hear how others are structuring their planning groups around this because getting WFM and routing telling the same story takes some thoughtful configuration.



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    Chris Rodriguez
    Contact Center System Administrator
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Result of Programming with Secondary Skills

    Posted 8 days ago

    Hi Karine,

    Well GC WFM do not support currently primary and secondary skilling.
    So if queue + skill + language associated, which mapped to certain planning group - then agent scheduled to contribute in this workload and of course will get interaction from that routing path, even if we know it is "backup" or "secondary" skill.

    So my opinion - is that contact center staff should plan accurately required staffing for each PG accurately and tools like long term forecasting and capacity planning with consideration of shrinkage, attrition and hiring plan should help there, to understand required staffing in short and long term perspective to cover all of our PG workload.

    So I do not think we need to overcomplicate WFM setup with primary and secondary skilled agents considerations during forecasting and scheduling.
    I also against of daily reskilling/ queue reassigning agents. All should be accurate and automated.

    To address any unexpected spikes in workload for certain PG and periods of the week/day/time - we should use intelligent routing capabilities instead.

    One of these I see is called conditional queue activation - which allows to expand potential target for interaction only if we hit certain conditions of queue health.
    https://help.genesys.cloud/articles/conditional-group-activation-overview/

    That is my recommendation.

    Thanks,
    Best Regards,



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    Dmitriy Vakulenko
    WFM Senior Product Manager
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    Original Message


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