Send us a text

Workforce Management has spent too long being treated as a tactical function — focused on schedules, service levels, and intraday firefighting. In this final episode of the WFM series, we elevate the conversation.

Workforce Management 401: The Strategic Partner is the capstone episode that ties everything together — from forecasting fundamentals to operational maturity — and challenges WFM leaders to step fully into their role as strategic business partners.

Joined by Arlyne Pardo and Dan Smitley, this conversation explores what truly changes when WFM moves beyond execution and into influence.

We discuss:

• Why WFM gets stuck in tactics — and how mindset is often the real blocker
• What it actually means for WFM to be a strategic partner to Operations, Finance, and Leadership
• How listening to frontline teams turns data into actionable insight
• Why “better” systems matter more than “easier” ones
• The role of trust, transparency, and curiosity in high-performing WFM teams
• How AI and automation should support WFM — not replace judgment
• The future skills WFM leaders need to grow their influence in an AI-driven CX landscape

This episode is for:

• Workforce Management professionals looking to grow beyond scheduling
• CX leaders who want stronger planning, forecasting, and cross-functional partnership
• Operations leaders trying to reduce burnout, chaos, and reactive decision-making
• Anyone building modern support organizations at scale

If you’ve ever felt like WFM’s insights were underutilized, ignored, or misunderstood — this episode puts language to that frustration and offers a clear path forward.

This is not about doing more work.

It’s about doing better work — with clarity, influence, and intention.

🎧 This is the final episode of the Workforce Management series.

Support the show

Enjoying CX Roundtable? Follow the show, leave a review, and share this episode with someone building the future of customer experience.

Send us a text

In this episode of CX Roundtable, we continue our Workforce Management (WFM) series with a deep dive into what good WFM actually looks like in practice.

After covering WFM fundamentals (WFM 101) and why workforce management matters (WFM 201), this episode focuses on the operational reality of workforce management—including KPIs, forecasting accuracy, intraday management, SOPs, tooling, and organizational trust.

Host Sarah Caminiti is joined by workforce management experts Dan Smitley and Arlyne Pardo to unpack how mature WFM teams operate inside modern contact centers, BPOs, and customer experience organizations.

You’ll learn:

• Which WFM KPIs actually matter—and why context is more important than activity
• How forecast accuracy works across volume, handle time, shrinkage, and absenteeism
• Why burnout is often a capacity and planning issue, not a performance problem
• What strong SOPs enable for forecasting, scheduling, and intraday execution
• How intraday management (RTA) keeps teams stable when demand shifts
• What to look for in workforce management tools, platforms, and vendor partnerships
• How trust and curiosity turn WFM into a strategic partner instead of a reporting function

Whether you’re a CX leader, operations leader, WFM analyst, contact center manager, or BPO partner, this episode demystifies workforce management and reframes it as applied decision-making at scale.

If workforce management has ever felt overly technical, intimidating, or disconnected from leadership strategy, this conversation grounds it in reality—and shows how to build a WFM function that actually works.

Stay tuned for the final episode in the series, where we explore strategic partnerships and cross-functional collaboration in workforce management.

Support the show

Enjoying CX Roundtable? Follow the show, leave a review, and share this episode with someone building the future of customer experience.

Send us a text

Workforce Management 201: The Link Between Cost, Burnout, and Experience

Workforce management is often treated as a scheduling function.

In reality, it’s a leadership decision with lasting consequences.

In this episode of CX Roundtable, host Sarah Caminiti is joined by workforce management leaders Dan Smitley and Arlyne Pardo to unpack how staffing decisions quietly shape three things every organization cares about: cost, burnout, and customer experience.

This conversation moves beyond definitions and tools to examine what actually happens when demand and capacity are misaligned—and why those effects show up later as attrition, absenteeism, missed revenue, and degraded trust.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why labor is one of the most misunderstood cost drivers in CX
• How bad schedules directly contribute to burnout and absenteeism
• The hidden revenue impact of missed demand
• A practical framework for balancing customer experience, business outcomes, and agent wellbeing
• How reclaiming autonomy in scheduling can improve engagement without breaking operations

Episode 1 laid the foundation.

Episode 2 is where the tradeoffs get real.

If you lead CX, Support, or Operations, this episode gives language to decisions you’re already making—and clarity on how to make them more intentionally.

🎧 Listen now and stay with the series.

Support the show

Enjoying CX Roundtable? Follow the show, leave a review, and share this episode with someone building the future of customer experience.