Contact Center Pipeline September 2025 | Page 21

Upskilling rarely enters the conversation. Many organizations focus on short-term savings in contact center costs rather than preparing for future needs.

Only the companies that truly value their customers- or their employees- are willing to invest in upskilling their teams.

Take remote work, for example. Plenty of companies saved money by eliminating physical office space. But how many reinvested those savings into higher wages, better benefits, or more flexible work options? A few did it right. Most didn’ t.

This is another case of organizations jumping on a trend

The C-suite has long looked at middle / lower-level management as low-hanging fruit to be picked to achieve savings, particularly when business outlooks appear uncertain and especially when revenue growth slows down.

All areas of business are not spared senior managements’ gimlet eyes, including the contact center. So, we asked Dan Smitley the following:

“ Are you seeing a pancaking of middle / supervisory management in the contact center, and if so, what are the implications for managing agents? In ensuring team and agent cohesion, performance, and productivity?”

Here’ s Dan’ s reply:“ To some extent, yes, but no more so than what’ s happening at the agent level. Both frontline management and frontline agents are being asked to do more with less, largely due to the assumed benefits of automation and AI-driven intelligence.

“ At the supervisor level, improved reporting and dashboarding have replaced a lot of manual spreadsheet work. But the time saved hasn’ t been redirected toward more coaching. Instead, it’ s just made room for more projects.

“ Too often, leadership assumes that giving supervisors better tools will naturally lead to better results. But in the push toward tech, we’ ve overlooked the continued need for human connection and manual interaction.

“ It’ s one thing to quickly spot that someone, let’ s say Susie, is struggling with her conversion rate because the data highlights it faster than ever. But unless there’ s time to connect with her- both in terms of scheduling and through social or emotional support- those metrics may not move at all. And worse, when that time doesn’ t exist, performance can actually decline.

“ Supervisors are facing the same challenge as agents: an assumed gain from better tools but without the space to create deeper, more meaningful engagements. Instead of using these tools to enrich the experience, they’ re being expected to produce more at a faster pace.”

- automation, AI, deflection- to serve the bottom line. But I think it’ s important they pause to ask: What are we optimizing for? And at what cost?

I don’ t hope their growth slows or that they’ re“ caught” by these decisions. I do hope they listen to their customers and employees and learn from any warning signs they start to see. It’ s not too late to adjust course and build something that balances efficiency with care: and positions their contact center as a long-term strategic asset.

LET’ S DISCUSS THE ADVENT AND RAPID DEVELOPMENT AND SPREAD OF AI. IS IT A HELP OR HINDRANCE TO WFM?

A: Right now, it’ s mostly a hindrance. I’ ve seen very little evidence that WFM teams or platforms are using AI in a way that genuinely transforms their work.

Most of the time“ AI” is a buzzword. Vendors use it as a placeholder for process automation or a fancier version of the same forecasting models we’ ve had for years. It’ s a distraction from the real innovation that WFM needs.

I think some of this stagnation comes from the fact that many legacy WFM platforms haven’ t had to evolve, as I noted earlier.

The maturity curve in WFM is long and wide: there are still plenty of organizations that are just now adopting WFM for the first time. For those companies, even the most basic platform is a huge improvement, so the pressure to innovate hasn’ t been there for the vendors.

There are some newer, more agile platforms entering the space, and I think they could disrupt the industry in a meaningful way. But I worry they’ ll get acquired by larger companies and absorbed into bloated, patchwork systems, losing their edge and vision in the process.

That said, I do think there’ s exciting potential if we stop thinking about AI as just a faster way to calculate volume and AHT. We need to start forecasting based on effort, not just time. A five-minute password reset doesn’ t carry the same emotional and cognitive weight as a five-minute suicide prevention call. Same length, vastly different workload.

The same goes for system complexity. An agent who has to touch 13 systems for a call is carrying a different kind of burden than someone handling a similar call that only requires two systems. But today’ s WFM platforms don’ t factor any of that in. They’ re still too focused on time as the only input.

I’ m watching closely to see which platforms begin incorporating these more nuanced metrics- mental load, emotional strain, complexity of system navigation- into their staffing models. That’ s when AI will start to help WFM, not just hype it.

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