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Forecasting for chat concurrency

  • 1.  Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 05-09-2023 10:14

    Hello! How do you folks forecast for chat concurrency, so your staffing requirements are correct? We are sitting around a concurrency factor of 2, but not sure how to incorporate that somewhere so the forecasted FTE need takes it into consideration. Thanks! 


    #Genesys Cloud CX
    #WorkforceManagement
    #Forecasting
    #Scheduling

    ------------------------------
    Shannon Hellner
    Paycor, Inc.
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 05-10-2023 13:42

    You can adjust staffing in the schedule by adjusting the AHT for that Queue in the forecast.
    The longer your AHT, the more staffing you will need in the schedule.
    The lower your AHT, the less staff you will need in the schedule. 



    ------------------------------
    Jeff Ragsdale
    Outdoor Network LLC
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-03-2023 12:30

    Hi Shannon, did you ever get any feedback from a Genesys employee on why their forecasting system doesn't take into account concurrency in messages? We have the same issue, different lines of business can take from 2 to 5 messages concurrently, yet the forecasting only looks at it as one at a time, so it says we need much more staff then we actually do, so the schedules are all off, because the foundational piece is broken. We're looking at manually adjusting the AHT in the forecast (but by how much?), but really what's the point of 28 magic algorithms Genesys offers, if they don't do anything to solve the actual problem.  



    ------------------------------
    Jonathan Jones
    Questrade Inc
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-03-2023 15:53

    Hi Jonathan! We had a Gen consultant with us for a number of sessions and nope, never got an answer. He couldn't figure it out and also wasn't able to get anyone else to figure it out either. I guess it doesn't exist or....is extremely well hidden? We pull the volume & AHT from Gen and do a manual staffing forecast, which is not great or necessarily accurate but close enough for my needs. 



    ------------------------------
    Shannon Hellner
    Paycor, Inc.
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-03-2023 16:11
    Thanks for sharing Shannon, not sure if you have already or not, but have you put anything in the product idea lab? I'd totally up vote this, because it feels like a gapping omission
    Jonathan Jones
    Senior Manager, Reporting and Analysis
    www.questrade.com
    Phone  416.227.9876
    Toll free  1.888.783.7866
    Fax  1.888.767.1731
    Questrade, Inc.
    5700 Yonge St., Suite 1900, Toronto, ON, M2M 4K2
    Questrade, Inc. is a registered investment dealer and member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Canadian Investor Protection Fund.
    Questrade® is a registered trademark licensed to Questrade Financial Group Inc.





  • 6.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    GENESYS
    Posted 10-04-2023 07:21
    Edited by Tracy Vickers 01-08-2024 07:43

    Forecasting for offered and AHT would have nothing to do with concurrency. Our staffing requirement does indeed model in gains or losses in efficiency by concurrency and other configuration items and adjusts requirement accordingly. Just because you have configured concurrency does not mean it always occurs. And of course more concurrency means increases in AHT and decrease in customer satisfaction (the customer realizes the agent is juggling other interactions because of the sporadic nature and delays of the agent's context switching).

    "it says we need much more staff then we actually do" there could be multiple reasons why this is the case (overly segmented load and staff, poor forecast accuracy, bad configuration, abysmal historic agent adherence, abysmal actual service performance, a much higher configured service performance goal than you actually can achieve interval over interval, etc.). The FAQ entry below covers some. As always, if you think there is an issue and nothing is obvious, then open a support ticket.

    Why are staffing requirements higher or lower than expected? - Genesys Cloud Resource Center

    Genesys Cloud Resource Center remove preview
    Why are staffing requirements higher or lower than expected? - Genesys Cloud Resource Center
    Workforce management can predict a higher or lower than expected staffing requirements... [More]
    View this on Genesys Cloud Resource Center >

     

    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 12-05-2023 14:47

    Hate to somewhat resurrect this Jay but can you please expand a little on your statement "Our staffing requirement does indeed model in gains or losses in efficiency by concurrency "?  Does it look specifically at the org concurrency settings for each media type and then against what may be set against individual agents within the BU/PG?  What's it using formula wise to calculate these "gains or losses"?



    ------------------------------
    Vaun McCarthy
    ------------------------------



  • 8.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    GENESYS
    Posted 12-08-2023 15:52

    Hi Vaun, I can jump in here.  We are currently working on documentation to describe how we handle concurrency for forecasting and scheduling but it's not quite ready to go up on the Resource Center yet so here's a quick summary.  On the forecasting side, both the historical and forecasted AHT includes all hold time, so in cases where there is concurrency the AHT is "inflated".  In cases where there is no concurrency, including hold time as part of AHT makes sense.  So when you are working within the forecasting module, the AHT is going to be higher than expected when dealing with interactions with concurrency, but it will be consistent with historical AHT visible in Analytics data.  Then the second step, when we generate staffing requirements, a second AHT calculation is run that backs out hold time when the same agent is on a different interaction (ie concurrency).  This adjusted AHT is used to generate staffing requirements, which will be lower since the AHT will be adjusted to be shorter.  This is the design currently, so the forecast data matches historical data from analytics, but staffing requirements used for scheduling are adjusted down to adjust for concurrency.  

    Having said all of that, this is the design, however we just recently discovered a bug in the requirements calculation that the engineering team is currently triaging.  The bug is resulting in some inaccuracies in the requirements generation piece for groups with concurrency which may be what you and other users are observing.  We are working on this with high priority but do not have an ETA for a bug fix yet, but are expecting it to be in Q1 2024.  

    We apologize for any confusion around how concurrency is handled and of course for the bug/defect that has been identified but are working in earnest to correct the issue.  

    I hope this helps.

    Thank you,

    Chris Johnson



    ------------------------------
    Christopher Johnson
    Genesys - Employees
    ------------------------------



  • 9.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 12-10-2023 02:14

    Thanks Chris, looking forward to any further updates on this one.

     


    Sensitivity Label: General

    From:
    Christopher Johnson via Genesys <Mail@ConnectedCommunity.org>
    Sent: Saturday, December 9, 2023 9:54 AM
    To: Vaun McCarthy <vaun.mccarthy@global.ntt>
    Subject: RE: Workforce Engagement Management : Forecasting for chat concurrency

     

     

    Hi Vaun, I can jump in here.  We are currently working on documentation to describe how we handle concurrency for forecasting and scheduling but...






  • 10.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 16 days ago

    Hello,

    Is there any update of the bug fix as said this is expected this quarter?

    Many thanks

    Jordan



    ------------------------------
    Jordan Hornby-Turner
    Nespresso UK Ltd
    ------------------------------



  • 11.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 15 days ago

    Also keen to hear if the bug identified has been fixed please?

    Heather 



    ------------------------------
    Heather Henderson
    Sabio Ltd
    ------------------------------



  • 12.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    GENESYS
    Posted 13 days ago

    Hi Heather, i apologize I should have made a post when the bug fix went live.  The bug was fixed on February 21, 2024.  So now, per my post in this thread on 12/8/2023, the staffing requirements are adjusted for concurrency now.  AHT in the forecast view will still include the full AHT including any hold time when the agent is working on a concurrent chat, but when we generate staffing requirements we back out the hold time that occurs when there is concurrency.  I hope this helps but let me know if you have any questions.

    Thank you,
    Chris Johnson



    ------------------------------
    Christopher Johnson
    Genesys - Employees
    ------------------------------



  • 13.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 3 days ago

    Hi Jay - do you have any evidence that shows that a change in concurrency changes resource demand, over the last 12 months I have tried and tested a number of scenarios and still to this day I see no change in demand based on a concurrency within a planning group on a specific queue whether it be 1, 2 or 3 , surely adjusting from 1 to 3 would show some change in demand ? I see a further comment below (Christopher Johnson)  stating Q1 2024 , that's almost over...... ?????



    ------------------------------
    Steven Johnson
    Northumbrian Water
    ------------------------------



  • 14.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    GENESYS
    Posted 2 days ago

    Hi Steven, 

    There was a bug fix released on February 21st 2024 related to the staffing requirements calculation when there is concurrency that should resolve any remaining issues.  The approach we've taken is to capture historical volume and AHT and use that for forecasting with no modifications for concurrency, but then factor in concurrency during staffing requirements calculation.  What this means is that your forecasted AHT will include time when an agent is working another concurrent interaction (so the AHT will match what was displayed historically but will appear high when there is concurrency).  But then when we generate staffing requirements for scheduling, the algorithm adjusts by reducing AHT when the agent was working on a concurrent interaction.  The result is reduced staffing requirements to reflect the concurrency that is happening.  

    I hope this helps.  

    Thank you,

    Chris Johnson



    ------------------------------
    Christopher Johnson
    Genesys - Employees
    ------------------------------



  • 15.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 2 days ago

    Thanks Chris, super speedy response ! 

    Do we have any data to provide evidence that this works as I say I cant seem to see any shift when i try different scenarios 

    have other Orgs confirmed acceptance the fix works as intended. Final query is this the right way to calculate the resource demand in these circumstances. I'm not saying it is or isn't but how many other people adopt this way ?   



    ------------------------------
    Steven Johnson
    Northumbrian Water
    ------------------------------



  • 16.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    GENESYS
    Posted 2 days ago

    Hi Steven,

    We are able to successfully back out "hold time" that is associated with concurrency.  In other words when an agent puts one interaction on hold to work another concurrent interaction, we are able to see this and can calculate an adjusted AHT in the historical data. As noted before, this only happens during staffing requirements calculations in the current design, so AHTs displayed historically and in forecasting will appear to be high when there is concurrency, but staffing requirements are adjusted to reflect the concurrency.

    You mentioned trying different scenarios and not seeing a shift.  I just wanted to mention that changing utilization/concurrency settings will not have an immediate impact on the forecast or staffing requirements since they run off of historical data.  So, if you were to change agent utilization settings to allow say 3 concurrent chats instead of two, as time passes and historical chat data appears with up to 3 overlapping/concurrent chats, the algorithm will see the new historical data and adjust out the additional hold time when an agent is working another concurrent chat.  In this example, the underlying AHT (time worked on each chat) may or may not actually change very much for a concurrency of 2 vs. 3.   

    Is there additional information that would be helpful to display to the user for concurrency?  Longer term we could consider showing the adjusted AHT in one of the UIs, and potentially the calculated concurrency rate but we don't have that work on the near term roadmap right now.  If there is additional information that would be helpful to see then we can create an idea to track. 

    Thank you,

    Chris Johnson



    ------------------------------
    Christopher Johnson
    Genesys - Employees
    ------------------------------



  • 17.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 2 days ago

    Thanks again

    Explanation is understood. Will be interesting to see when the demand shifts i.e. within next 2/3 4 weeks or further , i get it but i challenge it because if we change utilisation how will we ever truly know the impacts  

    have other orgs similar to Genesys followed a similar approach and interested in others views 



    ------------------------------
    Steven Johnson
    Northumbrian Water
    ------------------------------



  • 18.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-04-2023 08:42

    Our Chat people can handle up to three chats at a time.  Can I just adjust my forecasted interaction to 33% (dividw by three)?  It's not perfect but won't that give me a good estimate?  



    ------------------------------
    [Gina] [Palmer]
    [Workforce Manager]
    [Papa]
    ------------------------------



  • 19.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    GENESYS
    Posted 10-04-2023 09:17

    By doing that you ensure your forecast accuracy would be terrible. It would also render intraday monitoring a bit useless when it comes to offered count. Lots of areas in the product that compares forecast to actuals. Making gross adjustments like reducing offered count significantly would not be recommended. Concurrency is most likely not the driving factor of any perceived over staffing requirement prediction. The resource article I noted lists the most likely culprits of over-/under-forecasting.



    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D
    ------------------------------



  • 20.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-04-2023 12:09
    So Jay, what are your actual recommendations then, I'm looking for a solution, because if the GC forecasting isn't taking it into account and you simply use it, your schedules and the intraday is useless and what your saying is that if we adjust the AHT or Volume it's also useless, why hasn't Genesys tackled this concern from us?

    Jonathan Jones
    Senior Manager, Reporting and Analysis
    www.questrade.com
    Phone  416.227.9876
    Toll free  1.888.783.7866
    Fax  1.888.767.1731
    Questrade, Inc.
    5700 Yonge St., Suite 1900, Toronto, ON, M2M 4K2
    Questrade, Inc. is a registered investment dealer and member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Canadian Investor Protection Fund.
    Questrade® is a registered trademark licensed to Questrade Financial Group Inc.
    On Wed, Oct 4, 2023 at 9:19 AM Jay Langsford via Genesys <Mail@connectedcommunity.org> wrote:
    By doing that you ensure your forecast accuracy would be terrible. It would also render intraday monitoring a bit useless when it comes to offered... -posted to the "Workforce Engagement Management" community

    Workforce Engagement Management

    Start a Discussion
    Re: Forecasting for chat concurrency
    Reply to Group
    Jay Langsford
    Oct 4, 2023 9:17 AM
    Jay Langsford

    By doing that you ensure your forecast accuracy would be terrible. It would also render intraday monitoring a bit useless when it comes to offered count. Lots of areas in the product that compares forecast to actuals. Making gross adjustments like reducing offered count significantly would not be recommended. Concurrency is most likely not the driving factor of any perceived over staffing requirement prediction. The resource article I noted lists the most likely culprits of over-/under-forecasting.



    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D
    ------------------------------
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    Original Message:
    Sent: 10/4/2023 9:17:00 AM
    From: Jay Langsford
    Subject: RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    By doing that you ensure your forecast accuracy would be terrible. It would also render intraday monitoring a bit useless when it comes to offered count. Lots of areas in the product that compares forecast to actuals. Making gross adjustments like reducing offered count significantly would not be recommended. Concurrency is most likely not the driving factor of any perceived over staffing requirement prediction. The resource article I noted lists the most likely culprits of over-/under-forecasting.



    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D
    ------------------------------

    Original Message:
    Sent: 10-04-2023 08:42
    From: Gina Palmer
    Subject: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Our Chat people can handle up to three chats at a time.  Can I just adjust my forecasted interaction to 33% (dividw by three)?  It's not perfect but won't that give me a good estimate?  



    ------------------------------
    [Gina] [Palmer]
    [Workforce Manager]
    [Papa]


  • 21.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    GENESYS
    Posted 10-04-2023 13:26

    I've stated that staffing requirement does in fact take concurrency into account so I don't follow your 'why hasn't Genesys tackled this concern' ask. I have also pointed you to a resource article that lists the main culprits to over-/under-forecasting. If you feel there is an issue with the product and cannot see anything obvious (including the items noted in the resource article) as to why your staffing requirements are higher than expected, then open a support ticket so proper investigation can occur.



    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D
    ------------------------------



  • 22.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-04-2023 13:46
    Hi Jay,
     We have multiple open tickets with Genesys Support specifically for WFM issues and no answers, we simply keep being told to give them more examples and that we should know there are too many options to give us an answer, so to say that it's working as expected and your customer saying no it isn't, may not be the best approach for a company that's motto is all about CX. 
     If you're willing I would love to sit down with you and your team to discuss the many issues GC WFM has and our everyday struggles with getting it to work for us, instead of againsts us. Because I'll be honest I'm tired of hearing that it's working as expected.
    Cheers,
     Jonathan

    Jonathan Jones
    Senior Manager, Reporting and Analysis
    www.questrade.com
    Phone  416.227.9876
    Toll free  1.888.783.7866
    Fax  1.888.767.1731
    Questrade, Inc.
    5700 Yonge St., Suite 1900, Toronto, ON, M2M 4K2
    Questrade, Inc. is a registered investment dealer and member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Canadian Investor Protection Fund.
    Questrade® is a registered trademark licensed to Questrade Financial Group Inc.





  • 23.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    GENESYS
    Posted 10-04-2023 15:17

    I never stated that anything is working as expected. It could very well be that an investigation proves it is or isn't working as expected.

    I see no current or past tickets from your company that have been escalated to WFM engineering. For past or existing tickets have you requested an escalation?

    The following resource article has an expands section that outlines escalation management 
    https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/contact-genesys-cloud-care/

    If one of your tickets gets escalated and they engage engineering, I assure you we will exhaustively investigate. Initial investigation would be looking at the items mentioned in https://help.mypurecloud.com/faqs/why-are-staffing-requirements-higher-or-lower-than-expected/ then further if those items do not fully explain the disparity.



    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D
    ------------------------------



  • 24.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    GENESYS
    Posted 10-04-2023 17:41

    As soon as I am aware of your support ticket being escalated to my engineering group, I will personally get involved and make sure we have the right resources investigating. I run a daily report of support tickets that have been escalated to my engineering group. You can also direct message me once your ticket has been approved for escalation as a double measure I am aware of it.

    We will need to have a more recent example simply because we want to avoid configuration drift or have logs/files that have reached their time-to-live threshold and are no longer accessible.

    We should approach any troubleshooting with an open mind; it is possible that we discover a flaw or room for improvement in the software and/or fundamental 'configuration' issues (e.g., over forecasting of volume, over forecasting of AHT, staff not known to the BU handling BU interactions, overly aggressive service performance goals that far exceed what is actually obtained, etc.). One should not discount any of these items ahead of the actual investigation and eventual readout of findings.



    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D
    ------------------------------



  • 25.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-05-2023 11:07
    Hi Jay,

     Then perhaps you can speak to where these support tickets are in your process then, I'm sure I'll hear that it's not your department, but then where does the buck stop?

    Case # 0003333084 Lack of Acceptable Progress (Escalated on July 17 2023 16:36) There is an issue with forecast showing low numbers of AHT for the month of July and August (This continues to be a problem, we've been chasing this since July 2023)

    Case # 0003372283 Issue while modifying forecast. (Get "An error occurred while attempting to save your changes", we try to make certain changes to the Forecast like reducing the AHT for messaging to accommodate the concurrency issue we're facing, but when he makes the change and save, we get a generic error that it has errors, but doesn't tell us what the issue is or how to resolve it.

    Case # 0003180324 Schedules not properly staggered (Closed but never actually resolved, we worked directly with a group and an implementation partner nobody could give us a solution, so we simply gave up)

    There were cases opened by our implementation partner that we don't even have visibility to, that really didn't get us anywhere. The recommendations offered were "well we do that out of system" and I can attest that if you put out a survey to your current WFM base of users, the response will be they have to do more than 50% of their job outside of the GC WFM module, because 

     Support simply keeps asking for more examples over and over and months pass. They tell us to put it in an Ideas Portal that doesn't go anywhere, we come to these communities to try to find workarounds from Peers due to lack of progress. 

     Regards,
     Jonathan

    Jonathan Jones
    Senior Manager, Reporting and Analysis
    www.questrade.com
    Phone  416.227.9876
    Toll free  1.888.783.7866
    Fax  1.888.767.1731
    Questrade, Inc.
    5700 Yonge St., Suite 1900, Toronto, ON, M2M 4K2
    Questrade, Inc. is a registered investment dealer and member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Canadian Investor Protection Fund.
    Questrade® is a registered trademark licensed to Questrade Financial Group Inc.
    On Wed, Oct 4, 2023 at 5:43 PM Jay Langsford via Genesys <Mail@connectedcommunity.org> wrote:
    As soon as I am aware of your support ticket being escalated to my engineering group, I will personally get involved and make sure we have the... -posted to the "Workforce Engagement Management" community

    Workforce Engagement Management

    Start a Discussion
    Re: Forecasting for chat concurrency
    Reply to Group
    Jay Langsford
    Oct 4, 2023 5:41 PM
    Jay Langsford

    As soon as I am aware of your support ticket being escalated to my engineering group, I will personally get involved and make sure we have the right resources investigating. I run a daily report of support tickets that have been escalated to my engineering group. You can also direct message me once your ticket has been approved for escalation as a double measure I am aware of it.

    We will need to have a more recent example simply because we want to avoid configuration drift or have logs/files that have reached their time-to-live threshold and are no longer accessible.

    We should approach any troubleshooting with an open mind; it is possible that we discover a flaw or room for improvement in the software and/or fundamental 'configuration' issues (e.g., over forecasting of volume, over forecasting of AHT, staff not known to the BU handling BU interactions, overly aggressive service performance goals that far exceed what is actually obtained, etc.). One should not discount any of these items ahead of the actual investigation and eventual readout of findings.



    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D
    ------------------------------
      Reply to Group Online   View Thread   Recommend   Forward   Flag as Inappropriate  




     
    You are receiving this notification because you followed the 'Forecasting for chat concurrency' message thread. If you do not wish to follow this, please click here.

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    Original Message:
    Sent: 10/4/2023 5:41:00 PM
    From: Jay Langsford
    Subject: RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    As soon as I am aware of your support ticket being escalated to my engineering group, I will personally get involved and make sure we have the right resources investigating. I run a daily report of support tickets that have been escalated to my engineering group. You can also direct message me once your ticket has been approved for escalation as a double measure I am aware of it.

    We will need to have a more recent example simply because we want to avoid configuration drift or have logs/files that have reached their time-to-live threshold and are no longer accessible.

    We should approach any troubleshooting with an open mind; it is possible that we discover a flaw or room for improvement in the software and/or fundamental 'configuration' issues (e.g., over forecasting of volume, over forecasting of AHT, staff not known to the BU handling BU interactions, overly aggressive service performance goals that far exceed what is actually obtained, etc.). One should not discount any of these items ahead of the actual investigation and eventual readout of findings.



    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D
    ------------------------------

    Original Message:
    Sent: 10-04-2023 13:45
    From: Jonathan Jones
    Subject: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Hi Jay,
     We have multiple open tickets with Genesys Support specifically for WFM issues and no answers, we simply keep being told to give them more examples and that we should know there are too many options to give us an answer, so to say that it's working as expected and your customer saying no it isn't, may not be the best approach for a company that's motto is all about CX. 
     If you're willing I would love to sit down with you and your team to discuss the many issues GC WFM has and our everyday struggles with getting it to work for us, instead of againsts us. Because I'll be honest I'm tired of hearing that it's working as expected.
    Cheers,
     Jonathan

    Jonathan Jones
    Senior Manager, Reporting and Analysis
    www.questrade.com
    Phone  416.227.9876
    Toll free  1.888.783.7866
    Fax  1.888.767.1731
    Questrade, Inc.
    5700 Yonge St., Suite 1900, Toronto, ON, M2M 4K2
    Questrade, Inc. is a registered investment dealer and member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Canadian Investor Protection Fund.
    Questrade® is a registered trademark licensed to Questrade Financial Group Inc.



    Original Message:
    Sent: 10/4/2023 1:26:00 PM
    From: Jay Langsford
    Subject: RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    I've stated that staffing requirement does in fact take concurrency into account so I don't follow your 'why hasn't Genesys tackled this concern' ask. I have also pointed you to a resource article that lists the main culprits to over-/under-forecasting. If you feel there is an issue with the product and cannot see anything obvious (including the items noted in the resource article) as to why your staffing requirements are higher than expected, then open a support ticket so proper investigation can occur.



    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D

    Original Message:
    Sent: 10-04-2023 12:08
    From: Jonathan Jones
    Subject: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    So Jay, what are your actual recommendations then, I'm looking for a solution, because if the GC forecasting isn't taking it into account and you simply use it, your schedules and the intraday is useless and what your saying is that if we adjust the AHT or Volume it's also useless, why hasn't Genesys tackled this concern from us?

    Jonathan Jones
    Senior Manager, Reporting and Analysis
    www.questrade.com
    Phone  416.227.9876
    Toll free  1.888.783.7866
    Fax  1.888.767.1731
    Questrade, Inc.
    5700 Yonge St., Suite 1900, Toronto, ON, M2M 4K2
    Questrade, Inc. is a registered investment dealer and member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Canadian Investor Protection Fund.
    Questrade® is a registered trademark licensed to Questrade Financial Group Inc.
    On Wed, Oct 4, 2023 at 9:19 AM Jay Langsford via Genesys <Mail@connectedcommunity.org> wrote:
    By doing that you ensure your forecast accuracy would be terrible. It would also render intraday monitoring a bit useless when it comes to offered... -posted to the "Workforce Engagement Management" community

    Workforce Engagement Management

    Start a Discussion
    Re: Forecasting for chat concurrency
    Reply to Group
    Jay Langsford
    Oct 4, 2023 9:17 AM
    Jay Langsford

    By doing that you ensure your forecast accuracy would be terrible. It would also render intraday monitoring a bit useless when it comes to offered count. Lots of areas in the product that compares forecast to actuals. Making gross adjustments like reducing offered count significantly would not be recommended. Concurrency is most likely not the driving factor of any perceived over staffing requirement prediction. The resource article I noted lists the most likely culprits of over-/under-forecasting.

    ------------------------------Jay LangsfordVP, R&D------------------------------
      Reply to Group Online   View Thread   Recommend   Forward   Flag as Inappropriate  
    Original Message:Sent: 10-04-2023 08:42
     
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    Original Message:
    Sent: 10/4/2023 9:17:00 AM
    From: Jay Langsford
    Subject: RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    By doing that you ensure your forecast accuracy would be terrible. It would also render intraday monitoring a bit useless when it comes to offered count. Lots of areas in the product that compares forecast to actuals. Making gross adjustments like reducing offered count significantly would not be recommended. Concurrency is most likely not the driving factor of any perceived over staffing requirement prediction. The resource article I noted lists the most likely culprits of over-/under-forecasting.



    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D

    Original Message:
    Sent: 10-04-2023 08:42
    From: Gina Palmer
    Subject: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Our Chat people can handle up to three chats at a time.  Can I just adjust my forecasted interaction to 33% (dividw by three)?  It's not perfect but won't that give me a good estimate?  



    ------------------------------
    [Gina] [Palmer]
    [Workforce Manager]
    [Papa]


  • 26.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    GENESYS
    Posted 10-05-2023 12:16

    I am in R&D. We have a Care organization and we have Service Operations engineers that handle the different levels of support. So, I can only comment when there was something raised to Service Operations and they escalate to my R&D engineering group.

    0003333084 – the corresponding escalation ticket was closed 21-Aug-2023 due to lack of customer reply for 7d and no reply 5d after to reopen. Indication that there is a set of agents not known to the business unit that handle a non-trivial amount of interactions forecast for the business unit.

    0003372283 – I was not able to find a corresponding escalation ticket

    0003180324 – looks like three corresponding separate escalation tickets. The last corresponding escalation ticket was closed 14-Feb-2023 due to lack of customer reply for 7d and no reply 5d after to reopen. Indication on the ticket that we discussed configuration issues and best practices with the 'customer together with the partner'.

    Quite difficult to progress any investigation if one side stops communicating.

    Again, more than willing to look into future escalations that hit my R&D engineering group with an open mind.



    ------------------------------
    Jay Langsford
    VP, R&D
    ------------------------------



  • 27.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-05-2023 14:41
    Thanks Jay,
     Great to see high level management at Genesys working at it's best, what you don't see in those is the meetings we had with geneys analysts & engineers and partners that went nowhere and wasted my valuable time.
     The closed and lack of reply from customer is because it was open for months without resolution and we simply gave up, which is the support trend at Genesys, deflect or bury, appreciate you proving my point.
     Please do share this conversation with your President, because this interaction shows the lack of touch you have with your customers. I'll be sure to share it with mine.
    Regards,
     Jonathan

     
      
    Jonathan Jones
    Senior Manager, Reporting and Analysis
    www.questrade.com
    Phone  416.227.9876
    Toll free  1.888.783.7866
    Fax  1.888.767.1731
    Questrade, Inc.
    5700 Yonge St., Suite 1900, Toronto, ON, M2M 4K2
    Questrade, Inc. is a registered investment dealer and member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Canadian Investor Protection Fund.
    Questrade® is a registered trademark licensed to Questrade Financial Group Inc.





  • 28.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    GENESYS
    Posted 10-06-2023 08:52

    Hi Jonathan, 

    I am sorry that you are still experiencing issues with your care tickets & using Genesys WEM. This is not the kind of experience we want our customers to be having with our solution - we are more than open to setup additional time to review the outstanding items and get them to resolution. I will get in touch with your team to set it up if that works for you. 

    Thanks, 

    Annick 



    ------------------------------
    Annick Duffy
    WEM Knowledge Hub Leader
    Genesys.com
    ------------------------------



  • 29.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-05-2023 15:03
    Edited by Kiyomi Baker 10-05-2023 15:18

    Hi John - just want to chime in on this thread to let you know our org is also struggling massively with this tool and the resulting support from Genesys.  You aren't alone - we have had similar experiences across a myriad of issues.



    ------------------------------
    Kiyomi Baker
    ATB Financial
    ------------------------------



  • 30.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-06-2023 03:36

    Hi Everyone. I also would like to agree that we are struggling to get issues resolved and support from Genesys. So much so that we have created our own user forum, which we hold once a month, to try and help each other. Several different companies are involved and we all have the same experiences. One example of an unresolved issue - outstanding since early July 2023, same response as noted above - Genesys asks for more and more examples, of which we have sent previously, weeks go by - no response or update from Genesys. Issue with time off still outstanding. I am now thinking they have closed our ticket too for 'no response'.......!



    ------------------------------
    Donna Cockrell
    Northumbrian Water
    ------------------------------



  • 31.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-06-2023 11:36

    Unfortunately I have to agree with Jonathan's sentiment of "deflect or bury" when it comes to the support we have received pre and post migration to Genesys Cloud. During the concierge period of our migration we were matched with 2 different WFM "Experts" who consistently gave us wrong information or no response at all. We are now 8 months post-migration with far less system functionality than was available in engage, and the ETA of our top priority enhancement ideas are anywhere from 4-8 months behind schedule (it's worth noting that these are critical features that should have been present from day 1 such as the dynamic service level display). Overall it has been very very difficult to get in front of someone who actually knows what they are talking about when it comes to Genesys Cloud WFM. 

    @Donna Cockrell I'm interested in this external help forum so I have sent you a message. Thanks for mentioning this!



    ------------------------------
    Andrea Rushfeldt
    ATB Financial
    ------------------------------



  • 32.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-06-2023 13:59
    Thank you to everyone who has chimed in to show your concerns, frustrations and support.

     I would appreciate an invite to any groups that are working together on finding workarounds or even sharing concerns, so we can push items that we all see as opportunities to help drive change.

    Cheers,
     Jonathan


     
    Jonathan Jones
    Senior Manager, Reporting and Analysis
    www.questrade.com
    Phone  416.227.9876
    Toll free  1.888.783.7866
    Fax  1.888.767.1731
    Questrade, Inc.
    5700 Yonge St., Suite 1900, Toronto, ON, M2M 4K2
    Questrade, Inc. is a registered investment dealer and member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Canadian Investor Protection Fund.
    Questrade® is a registered trademark licensed to Questrade Financial Group Inc.





  • 33.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-24-2023 19:57

    Thanks for bringing this up, Jonathan. 

    Would love to be in a formal forum to express similar issues that we're having. I'm starting to think that we should look elsewhere rather than continue to bring more of our brands into this product tbh. 



    ------------------------------
    Jayson Sumawang
    MyOptiqueGroup
    ------------------------------



  • 34.  RE: Forecasting for chat concurrency

    Posted 10-11-2023 21:01

    We are using WFM Prem version with plans to migrate to the Cloud version. Would love to be included in these user forums please. Would love to hear what other companies are struggling with or what issues have been overcome from a user support perspective.



    ------------------------------
    Daisha Devonish-Whiteside
    Walgreens Co.
    ------------------------------



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