The News: Genesys recently had its annual analyst update for its Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) solution, where the company shared platform statistics, reinforced what it considers to be the core drivers of helping companies build a solid employee experience, laid out its product roadmap, and shared customer success stories. Read more about Genesys developments on the company’s website.
Genesys Cloud Workforce Engagement Management Showing Strong Growth
Analyst Take: Genesys started building and rolling out capabilities in the WEM in 2017. According to Merijn te Booij, Genesys WEM GM, this year saw strong growth in the number of organizations using Genesys Cloud WEM, as well as deepened usage in areas outside of the core offerings of quality management, recording, and workforce management capabilities.
GM te Booij emphasized the company’s goal of focusing on the human element of WEM, helping companies focus on how to better support agents. Three areas were outlined to accomplish this goal:
- Automated listening and learning: Taking in all the employee-customer interactions, eliminating management bias, and taking a human-centric approach. Te Booij gave the example of “coaching up” to help agents in a positive way rather than focusing on what went wrong and what behavior anomalies were occurring.
- Continuous understanding of engagement: The use of AI produces real-time analysis to help find the positive patterns—where things are going right as well as areas for improvement.
- Intuitive and human-centric employee experience: This area includes good UX and scheduling flexibility. It also includes one of my favorite quotes of the session, from Merijn, “Build what they need and give them an environment in which we treat them as mature adults.”
WEM Customer Stories
Robert Beasley, Global Director, Strategic Solutions, WEM, walked through four customer highlights, communicating that one of the differentiators in how Genesys is winning business is the company’s ability to let customers consume the technology at whatever pace feels good to them. Some customers are coming off other platforms or from on-premises to cloud, making a full transition to Genesys Cloud WEM a bit of a lift. But it does not have to be done that way. Companies can pick and choose capabilities based on where they are with their own readiness to implement change.
Genesys was able to present case studies from GSG, Alight Solutions, AdaptHealth, and Etraveli Group. In the case of AdaptHealth, the company went through a series of acquisitions, leaving them with a lot of disconnected systems, all of which needed to keep running as there were dependencies. And of course, lots of manual processes with tasks such as making sure staffing levels were good, still relying on not easily accessible data found in spreadsheets. Additionally, none of the systems helped to create a sense of team unity and engagement, which can be a real sore spot during acquisitions.
These challenges, as well as lacking resource management data and insights, were hindering the company’s ability to support the growth they were experiencing, while keeping on a solid innovation path. AdaptHealth brought Genesys WEM online and saw improvements across a variety of metrics including:
- 19% improvement in service level year over year
- 12% quality increase with 96% average agent quality score
- 60% gain in productivity
- 10% increase in schedule adherence
- 84% reduction in abandonment rate
AdaptHealth leveraged Genesys forecasting, which uses AI and machine learning (ML), to solve a real point of friction and time waste, freeing up time for managers and supervisors to focus on more strategic issues. Other time savings were found in onboarding, with AdaptHealth reporting they can train agents in an afternoon and have them ready to take calls the next day. The company also implemented gamification so that agents can have their own home page with short- and long-term goals as well as rankings for some friendly competition.
This event was a good update from Genesys. I appreciated the emphasis on not just metrics and productivity but also the human element of agent experience. It was also interesting to see the company’s vision for employee experience, which goes beyond WEM and beyond agents and managers. The company is on solid footing with its current offering, and I look forward to seeing how the solution evolves in 2024.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
Genesys and Salesforce Partnership Brings Together CCaaS and CRM
GSG Elevates EX and CX With the Use of Workforce Engagement Management
FedRAMP Authorization Achieved for Genesys Cloud CX
Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
She brings more than 20 years of experience in technology research and marketing; prior to her current role, she was a Research Analyst at Omdia, authoring market and ecosystem reports on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and User Interface technologies. Sherril was previously Manager of Market Research at Intrado Life and Safety, providing competitive analysis and intelligence, business development support, and analyst relations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
