Frequently asked questions

Question 1

Is Alvaria now Aspect?

Answer

The Alvaria brand will continue to exist, focusing on its strengths in outbound contact center solutions. This strategic split allows Aspect and Alvaria to concentrate on their respective areas of expertise, ensuring that both brands can offer the best possible solutions to their customers.

Question 2

Why is Aspect back?

Answer

Aspect is being brought back to leverage its strong heritage and leadership in the contact center and workforce management industries. By focusing on what Aspect does best—innovating in workforce technology—we can better serve our customers and meet the evolving needs of the modern workforce.

Question 3

How will the return of Aspect benefit me as a customer?

Answer

The return of Aspect means a renewed focus on delivering top-tier workforce management solutions that are rooted in decades of industry experience. You can expect continued enhancements to our WorkforceOS™ platform (formerly Alvaria Workforce Classic) and the introduction of a new application designed with the employee experience at its core.

Question 4

Do Aspect products integrate with my existing systems?

Answer

Yes, WorkforceOS™ and our new employee interface seamlessly integrate with one another, plus your existing systems. Our new employee interface serves as a user-friendly front-end platform for teams, while WorkforceOS™ serves as the robust foundation for management and workforce professionals. WorkforceOS™ easily integrates with pre-existing HR, payroll, and BI systems. This streamlines workflows, minimizes duplicate data, enables employee management and improves employee experience.

Question 5

Why is employee engagement important?

Answer

Your team is one of your greatest investments. Retaining talented employees is key to quality customer service experiences and business success. According to Gallup, employee engagement is directly connected to overall organization performance, with disengaged team members accounting for approximately $1.9 trillion in lost productivity. Improving employee retention starts with boosting engagement and satisfaction. WEM tools provide the proper resources to engage employees across all levels of your business.

Question 6

How does efficient workforce management help a contact center?

Answer

WFM software helps enable workforce team analysts forecast volumes and staff required to meet service optimization and cost optimization goals. Contact centers can schedule staff in compliance with company requirements, employee preferences, industry standards, and union requirements. Efficient workforce management promotes staffing efficiency while tracking performance, eliminating overstaffing and understaffing.

Aspect’s WEM platform also promotes employee efficiency by giving teams visibility into assigned work plans, performance goals, and feedback options to achieve those goals.

Question 7

What is workforce optimization (WFO)?

Answer

Workforce optimization is a precursor strategy to WFM and WEM. WFO was developed in contact centers to optimize employee productivity, boost customer satisfaction, and reduce costs. Workforce optimization utilizes technologies and processes focused on workforce management, improved quality management, and enhanced performance management for the highest return on investment.

Question 8

What is workforce engagement management (WEM)?

Answer

Workforce engagement management puts the employee experiences at the center of providing optimal service to customers. WEM software refers to a set of tools focused on boosting employee engagement and satisfaction, ultimately minimizing turnover. These tools include gamification strategies that earn employee’s recognition and rewards, options to improve employee performance through evaluation and feedback, processes to streamline schedule and time management, and enhancements to reach individual and collective business goals through metrics.

Question 9

What is workforce management (WFM)?

Answer

Workforce management is a business practice, team of people, and set of technology tools used to address the needs of a business, oftentimes a contact center. WFM includes technologies and practices that support the continuous cycle of workforce planning and execution. This typically includes forecasting, scheduling, tracking, adherence management, and employee self-service.

The most fundamental question in workforce management is, “how many workers do we need to efficiently cover a workload at an optimal cost?” In other words, having the right people at the right time, in the right place for the right cost. An additional consideration in WFM is making sure your employees have the right skills to provide the highest quality service to customers.

Question 10

What is Aspect WorkforceOS™?

Answer

WorkforceOS™ is a comprehensive, all-in-one platform of workforce engagement management (WEM) tools. WorkforceOS™ includes four scalable tools, Aspect Workforce™, Aspect Quality™, Aspect Performance™, and Aspect League™, to elevate and empower your business. WorkforceOS™ will soon include a new agent experience, improving workdays for teams across industries.

Question 11

What is Aspect Workforce™?

Answer

Aspect Workforce™, part of the WorkforceOS™ platform, is our comprehensive WFM solution to help you strategically manage your organization. Workforce enables precise forecasting, various scheduling options, real-time adherence insights, and employee self-service to boost productivity while reducing cost.

Question 12

What is Aspect Quality?

Answer

Aspect Quality™ covers all things quality assurance. Ensure your customers receive the best service possible with employee evaluation tools, recording management options, and feedback features.

Question 13

What is Aspect Performance ™?

Answer

Aspect Performance™, part of the WorkforceOS™ platform, gives you actionable insights through detailed reporting to make informed business decisions. Monitor employee performance metrics, generate reports to compare your KPIs against various data resources, and ensure strategic goal alignment. Performance also provides coaching options to improve workflows and track improvement, which promotes a culture of continuous improvement.

Question 14

What is Aspect League ™?

Answer

Aspect League™ is part of the WorkforceOS™ platform. League turns work into play with gamification tools to keep employees engaged, happy, and productive. League includes competitions, challenges, and leader dashboards to improve employee retention while encouraging business growth.

Question 15

Can WorkforceOS™ handle large-scale operations?

Answer

Yes, WorkforceOS™ is designed to manage large-scale operations, providing scalable solutions for companies of all sizes.

Question 16

What engagement tools does WorkforceOS™ offer?

Answer

WorkforceOS™ provides a variety of tools to keep employees engaged, including:

Real-Time Dashboards: Visualize performance metrics and KPIs in real-time for immediate feedback and recognition.

Gamification: Features like competitions, leaderboards, badges, and rewards motivate employees to achieve goals.

Flexible Scheduling: Options to schedule using employee preferences, improving work-life balance.

Employee Self-Service: Employees can manage their schedules, request time off, and swap shifts with ease.

Mobile Access: Your team can stay engaged and motivated from anywhere at any time.

Question 17

How does WorkforceOS ™ simplify schedule management for managers?

Answer

Automated scheduling tools utilize historic data to predict labor needs and ensure proper scheduling recommendations are made. WorkforceOS™ automates employee request evaluation limiting the time managers spend on scheduling tasks.

Question 18

How does WorkforceOS ™ empower employees to manage their schedules?

Answer

WorkforceOS™ empowers employees with self-service scheduling tools that enhance flexibility and autonomy, leading to higher satisfaction and reduced administrative burdens for managers. WorkforceOS™ offers a self-service portal where employees can manage their schedule, request available overtime, and set work schedule preferences.

Question 19

How does WorkforceOS™ help measure KPIs?

Answer

WorkforceOS™ has a comprehensive set of functions allowing administrators, business analysts, and employees to view and manage various workforce duties. In addition, Aspect Workforce™ seamlessly integrates with Aspect Performance offering dozens of metrics which can be managed as KPIs based on your unique needs.

Question 20

How does WorkforceOS™ refine staffing levels?

Answer

By utilizing historic data and intelligent forecasting algorithms, WorkforceOS™ ensures that staffing levels are fine-tuned to meet business needs during any given day.

Question 21

Are you able to bulk upload schedules?

Answer

Yes, there is a standard segment import feature that is used for uploading schedules in bulk for contact center scheduling.

Question 22

Is there an option for agents to trade and/or bid out their schedule?

Answer

Our flexible shift bid feature in Aspect Workforce™ enables companies to offer 'build your own schedule' capabilities to gig economy contact center staff while ensuring the resulting schedules will meet business rules set by the contact center forecasting software.

Question 23

How do you schedule multiple sites without having to make additional changes?

Answer

The workforce modules in Aspect's WEM base package can forecast, schedule, and track (IDP) for multiple sites without the need for additional changes. Agents can be assigned to specific sites or used in other sites. The base package also includes a module which offers advanced networking and staff scheduling capabilities to provide a global perspective for centers that share contacts across multiple sites.

Question 24

What is Workforce Experience?

Answer

Our new workforce experience is a next-generation employee engagement tool designed to simplify and allow employees to easily view and manage their schedules. This application will seamlessly integrate with Aspect Workforce™, serving as a powerful employee-facing experience. The tool provides an intuitive, modern, and streamlined user experience that empowers employees by improving their work-life balance, reducing administrative burdens, and enhancing overall job satisfaction.

Question 25

Who would benefit from Workforce Experience?

Answer

Existing contact center customers who are looking for a simple, powerful WEM tool that has seamless integrations and simple APIs. Customers who are looking to streamline and simplify their workforce engagement management and who want to use data insight to improve the employee experience.

Question 26

Where and when will Workforce Experience be available?

Answer

Our new agent application will be available in the U.S. during beta and initial launch. Beta will run through Q1'25, with general availability slated for March 2025.

Question 27

Is there a limit on how many employees Workforce Experience can support?

Answer

No, there are no limits. WorkforceOS is built as a scalable solution to support as many employees as needed.

Question 28

How does Workforce Experience handle shift changes?

Answer

Aspect's new employee interface makes shift management transparent, displaying available shifts that fit employee defined preferences. Changes requested can be automatically evaluated or managers can approve or deny requests with one click and an option to provide additional context to explain decisions. In some cases, the application will propose alternate change options that have a high likelihood of approval.

Question 29

What is the difference between Workforce Experience and Aspect Workforce?

Answer

The new workforce experience is a complementary layer to Aspect Workforce- with a direct integration - giving users agency over schedules while offering seamless data connection to Aspect’s robust WorkforceOS suite. Together, these two solutions allow customers to meet the needs of both administrators and agents to improve user adoption and ultimately maximize the value of their workforce investment in the cloud.

Frequently asked questions

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General

WorkforceOS

Workforce Experience

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