Workforce Optimization for Customer Service

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Workforce Optimization for Customer Service

    Workforce Optimization for Customer Service is a comprehensive application designed to help ServiceNow customers manage and enhance the productivity of their customer service teams from a single platform. It enables efficient work routing, skill and schedule management, and performance monitoring, all within configurable workspaces that administrators can tailor to meet service objectives.

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    Key Features

    • Real-Time Operations and Performance Monitoring: Managers can assess the status and performance of teams and agents across multiple channels and queues, enabling timely support and improved customer experience.
    • Channel Management: Automates routing and assignment of work items based on agent availability, skills, and capacity. Managers can balance workloads, monitor real-time presence, join team chats, and manually allocate tasks as needed.
    • Scheduling: Centralized management of shift and schedule plans including assigning shifts, defining breaks, approving time off and shift swaps, creating on-call rotations, and forecasting staffing needs.
    • Schedule Adherence: Provides insights into agents’ compliance with planned schedules by comparing planned versus actual attendance, allowing managers to set and adjust adherence targets.
    • Demand Forecasting: Uses historical data to predict staffing needs and contact volumes at fine-grained intervals (15, 30, 60 minutes), facilitating proactive schedule adjustments without compromising service goals.
    • Teams and Performance Analytics: Enables monitoring of key performance indicators (KPIs) across teams and agents, with the ability to drill down into individual profiles, skills, and coaching needs.
    • Coaching and Skills Assessment: Automates agent skill assessments and grading, identifies skill gaps, and recommends training or coaching plans. Integrates with third-party learning management systems (LMS) such as Udemy, Pluralsight, and Cornerstone OnDemand to assign relevant courses.

    Key Outcomes

    • Improved workforce productivity and customer service quality through efficient work routing and workload balancing.
    • Enhanced manager visibility into team performance and real-time operational metrics, enabling faster decision-making and targeted coaching.
    • Proactive workforce management by forecasting demand and optimizing scheduling to meet service level agreements (SLAs).
    • Empowered agents with self-service schedule management including viewing peer schedules, requesting time off, and shift swaps.
    • Continuous skill development through automated assessments and integrated training programs, resulting in better issue resolution and customer satisfaction.

    Manage and maintain the productivity of your workforce from a single application using Workforce Optimization for Customer Service. With this application, you can efficiently route work to your team, manage your team's skills and schedules, and monitor their performance.

    Watch this short video to see how managers use Workforce Optimization for Customer Service.

    The application is available on configurable workspaces. Administrators can configure and customize the workspace using the application capabilities to complete the service objectives efficiently.

    Workforce Optimization for Customer Service enables you to:
    • Assess real-time operations and performance of teams and agents across different channels and queues.
    • Keep track of ongoing work and provide real-time help to team members for a better customer experience.
    • Ensure that managers only see the data and views of relevant teams.
    • Monitor and measure team performance and provide feedback using assessments.
    • Predict and recommend skills for agents.
    • Identify opportunities to coach and train your teams.

    Manage and monitor the real-time work being done by your agents across different channels and queues. Provide timely help to your team members to solve cases faster and help with complex customer issues. Coach your teams so that they gain the skills that let you address the demands from your customers. Efficiently schedule your teams to provide better coverage with integrated channel management.

    As a manager, you can monitor the demand for agents and skills in your organization to resolve issues. Assess agent skills, identify areas where they need improvement, and provide training to enhance their skill set. Track your team's performance and manage the schedule of all agents in your assignment group from a unified location.

    As an agent, you can manage your own schedule, access the schedule of your peers, and request time off or shift swaps.

    Manager workspace landing page

    The landing page offers a real-time view of key performance metrics, team updates, and real-time alerts that improve collaboration. View metrics using various score cards, donuts, gauges, line charts, and bar charts with multiple data sets.

    Channel management

    Manage pending work items from customers, manage the daily work routine of agents, balance the workload between agents adhering to promised SLAs, and automatically route and assign work items to agents based on their availability, capacity, and skills. Monitor your teams in real-time and join their chat conversations to help when there is a need.

    Using Channel Management, you can also:

    • Review the real-time performance of your teams across various channels and queues.
    • Review pending work items and manually allocate work items to available agents.
    • Monitor the actual work being performed by your team members.
    • Monitor the status of the queues.
    • Track and change the real-time presence and capacity utilization of your team members.

    Scheduling

    Manage the scheduling for your organization from a central location. Create shift plans and schedule plans, assign agents to shifts, and publish the schedules. Manage teams' approvals, swap agents' shifts, and forecast agent staffing scenarios. Access your team's calendar to see which agents are scheduled for coverage and which agents have taken time off.

    Using Scheduling, you can also:

    • Assign agents to shifts.
    • Define break time.
    • Preview and publish team schedule.
    • Approve agent time off or shift-swap requests.
    • Create on-call shifts and assign primary, secondary rotation groups to handle escalation scenarios.

    Schedule Adherence

    Access your team's calendar to see which agents adhered to their planned schedules and make timely decisions to increase your team's performance by setting expected adherence targets.

    Using Schedule Adherence, you can also:

    • Configure and adjust the schedule adherence and conformance formulas and properties so that you can customize them for your organization.
    • Access the schedule of all of your teams from one location and gain insights on whether your team is complying with published schedules.
    • Analyze the historical time attendance of your team members.
    • View planned vs. actual historical data for your team and individual agents.

    Demand Forecasting

    Forecast the demand for teams and predict resources based on historical data.

    Using Demand Forecasting, you can also:

    • View the agent staffing forecast at 15, 30, and 60-minute intervals on the team calendar.
    • Adjust and prioritize schedules, tasks, breaks, and meetings for agents without impacting service objectives.
    • Use historical data to forecast contact volumes (cases and interactions) at 15-minute intervals.

    Teams

    Monitor performance trends for your teams using Key Performance Indicator (KPI) groups. Create a set of KPIs and apply them to all groups within a team and assess team performance from one location.

    Using Teams, you can also:

    • Identify all the teams that you manage as well as the ones you have visibility into.
    • Analyze the KPIs that are crucial for your team.
    • Drill into agents within each team and monitor their performance.
    • Access each agent's profile to view details such as their manager, peers, and assignment groups.
    • Drill down into each agent's skills or suggest them for coaching.

    Coaching and skills assessment

    Enhance the quality of work done by your agents using Coaching. Assess agent skills and recommend the skills that they require to resolve issues. Identify coaching opportunities based on the recommendations, set coaching plans to improve their skills, and train agents to acquire those skills.

    Using Coaching, you can also:

    • Automate the scoring, grading, and assessment of agent skills.
    • Use coaching opportunities to create assessments.
    • Track training assigned to agents based on their assessments.
    • Analyze the skill gap and recommend training.
    • Assign courses to agents from third-party learning management systems (LMS), such as Udemy, Pluralsight, and Cornerstone OnDemand.