WFM (Workforce Management) — Workforce Management
What is WFM (Workforce Management)?
WFM (Workforce Management) is the practice and software category for forecasting contact-center demand, building agent schedules that match expected call, chat, and message volume, and tracking real-time adherence to those schedules. Good WFM balances two competing goals: enough staff to hit service-level targets during peak volume, without so much overstaffing that idle agent time drives up cost unnecessarily.
More detail
WFM forecasting typically uses historical volume patterns by time of day, day of week, and season to predict staffing needs, then builds shift schedules that fill those predicted requirements.
Real-time adherence tracking compares each agent's actual status (available, on a call, in a break) against their scheduled activity, flagging deviations a supervisor may need to address.
Frequently asked
- What's the difference between WFM forecasting and scheduling?
- Forecasting predicts how much contact volume to expect by time period based on historical patterns; scheduling then builds agent shifts to cover that predicted demand — WFM software typically handles both steps together.
- What does 'schedule adherence' mean in a WFM context?
- It measures how closely an agent's actual real-time status matches what their schedule says they should be doing at that moment — for example, being available during a scheduled work block rather than on an unscheduled break.
See also
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