Welcome back to ‘Ask Aspect’, a series where we discuss workforce industry hot topics with our team of tenured experts. During our last installment, we sat down with Tina Ghanem, Director of Product, to chat about the workforce management product strategy and big changes happening at Aspect.
Today, we’re talking with Kyle Pendleton, Principal Solutions Consultant at Aspect. Kyle brings 25 years of experience in workforce technology, having worked with Aspect and other enterprise-level vendors. Kyle has worked in roles ranging from support and implementation to consulting and education. Today, as a Principal Solutions Architect, Kyle helps prospective customers develop strategies and solutions for their workforce needs.
Let’s pick Kyle’s brain about trends in workforce management, assessing customer needs, and the importance of prioritizing people alongside product in the workplace.
Q: What do you think is the most impactful use of AI in workforce tech?
I think there are a lot of really interesting applications of AI. We can draw some parallels between what we see on the front line in the contact center and workforce management. Some simple work is being taken over by AI on contact center frontlines, so agents can handle more complex interactions.The same thing is going to happen in workforce management. We can turn and surface workforce data with AI to automate processes and help people make more informed decisions. So I'm intrigued by AI contributing to what we‘ve been calling “the next best action” in managing intradays within workforce management.
Presently, you see a screen that shows your plan for the day, interval by interval and what’s expected to occur versus what's actually happening. Once performance starts to detract from that plan, workforce analysts have a decision to make. They have to ask “What am I going to do to handle this? Should I cancel meetings? Should I call for overtime?” I think that having AI evaluate all of the potential solutions and then making suggestions will help free up analyst time.
Q: What would you tell somebody who's cautious or afraid that AI will start replacing jobs?
Like I mentioned with automation of intraday performance, AI isn’t going to make that decision for me. It's going to give me all of the tools that I need to make that decision and then implement that decision with just a few clicks.
So in terms of the workforce analyst experience, I don't think it's going to be replacing any jobs. I think it's going to make things easier for analysts and give them more time to do more analytical thinking than perhaps they do today.
Q: As a Solutions Consultant, you do a lot of demos for prospective Aspect customers. How do you determine what to explore with customers?
Most people have an understanding of workforce management at its highest level; but at times, there’s some light WFM education that goes into product demos.
But at the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is have a good conversation about what’s really important to prospective customers. What problems are they trying to solve? Once we understand answers to this key question, we can curate a custom demo that’s right for them.
We can’t demo every single button in our workforce platform, that would take forever to accomplish. It’s most important to focus on what they’re interested in and what can directly solve their business challenges. During that exploration process, we can also find other components in the platform that could address other challenges that they maybe hadn't been considered before. This can include figuring out how to motivate contact center agents and achieve better performance with each ring. So we can find opportunities for prospective customers to improve their contact center operations with features in Aspect League and Aspect Performance.
Q: What differentiates Aspect from other vendors?
I think the people make a a huge difference here. I can say that for me personally, it was a huge reason why I wanted to come back from working for other vendors. It’s not just the product, but the people here that are working it. We’re working tightly with customer throughout the process, starting with pre-sales. A whole team that includes experienced account directors and solutions architects that help see customers through the process. We’ve made it a practice to be really good partners to both our prospects and current customers.
Q: What excites you most about Aspect products?
Nobody's been doing workforce management longer than we have. When it comes to features, Aspect WFM is packed with functionalities and I don’t know if anybody has as many. So I think on one hand that can be intimidating, but on the other hand, it's incredibly flexible. Our products can work in a lot of different environments. Customers across different industries resonate with our features like agent self-service, real-time adherence capabilities, interactive reporting mechanisms, and scheduling management to solve various business problems.
Want to learn more about Aspect's workforce management solutions? Click here to learn more about our WorkforceOS platform and what’s on our product roadmap to continue tailoring solutions to meet evolving customer needs. See you next time!
