2022 Community Conference

Verint Technology Showcase

Originally broadcast on Monday 16th March, 12:30

The Real-Time Workforce, Realign the Moment: How Real-Time Insights Reshape Performance
Our Gold Sponsors Verint explore how moving beyond traditional WFM unlocks a new era of performance and employee experience. We’ll walk through the journey to Reset, Redefine and Realign—resetting long‑held assumptions about coaching, redefining performance through real‑time behavioural insight, and empowering agents to realign instantly with live coaching, instant EX scoring, and flexible scheduling tools. 

Hiya Technology Showcase

Originally broadcast on Monday 16th March, 13:30

Join Hiya for a focused session on Branded Calling and how verified, identifiable outbound calls are transforming customer communication. As trust becomes critical to engagement, branded calling helps organizations improve answer rates, reduce call hesitation, and build confidence at the moment of contact. We’ll explore why it matters, how it aligns with evolving customer expectations, and practical ways to strengthen voice engagement.

Keynote: Redefining Workforce Planning

Originally broadcast on Tuesday 17th March, 09:30

This keynote challenges outdated thinking in Resource Planning and redefines forecasting, insight, scheduling and Real-Time as a single system of strategic intelligence.

Aspect Technology Showcase

Originally broadcast on Tuesday 17th March, 12:30

From Excel to Execution: A New Way to Plan Capacity
Most contact centres still rely on spreadsheets to plan capacity and staffing, even though the pace of change has outgrown static models. In this 45-minute joint technology workshop, Aspect and Cinareo will show why moving beyond Excel is no longer optional, and what good capacity planning discipline looks like in practice.

Workshop: Redefining Scheduling

Originally broadcast on Tuesday 17th March, 13:30

To prepare for the future of AI-driven scheduling, organisations must shift from control to design, from discretion to governance, and from firefighting to readiness, developing planners as system stewards, leaders as culture architects, and employees as responsible participants in a shared, transparent workforce ecosystem

Workshop: Redefining Real-Time

Originally broadcast on Tuesday 17th March, 15:30

Organisations that invest only in automation will create faster operations. Organisations that invest in people + AI + learning cultures will create smarter, fairer, and more resilient systems.

Keynote: Redefining Operational Improvement

Originally broadcasted on Wednesday 18th March, 09:30

Resetting Improvement explores how Quality, Learning, Knowledge and Continuous Improvement must evolve for a new era of customer operations, moving beyond legacy habits and outdated metrics toward adaptive frameworks, evidence‑based readiness and human‑centred performance that can thrive in the complexity of 2026 and beyond. 

Technology Showcase

Originally broadcasted on Wednesday 18th March, 12:30

Join QStory's David Preece for a tech showcase of our Back Office solution, Work Item Manager. This session will demonstrate how the system acts as a "Back Office ACD'" to accurately capture true handling times, measure agent productivity, and replace gut-feel planning with reliable, data-driven metrics.

Workshop: Automated Quality

Originally broadcasted on Wednesday 18th March, 15:30

Automated Quality gives us the chance to reset what QA exists to do. This session looks beyond automation as efficiency, and instead explores how redefining the QA role can unlock greater value, shifting focus from checking interactions to shaping performance, insight and outcomes.

Keynote: Redefining Data, Analytics & Insight

Originally broadcasted on Thursday 19th March, 09:30

Resetting Insight explores how data, analytics and AI are moving from reporting to responsible, autonomous decision-making, and how organisations can embed insight directly into the systems that shape customer and colleague experiences.

Workshop: Data Principles in a CCaaS World

Originally broadcasted on Thursday 19th March, 10:30

This session highlights the essential principles needed to manage, govern, and activate data in a cloud‑native environment and discussed the differences from how data is presented from on premise platforms. 

Workshop: Opensource Tooling & Methods

Originally broadcasted on Thursday 19th March, 13:30

Whilst Excel remains the original example of “Open Source Tooling” in our industry it does come with its limitations. In this session we will discuss how tools such as “Python” “R” and “Shiny” can be utilised within planning and insight and the benefits they can bring. This session will feature expert input from Phil Stubbs from Atlantic insight.

Workshop: Why a ‘reset’ in vulnerability customer service is necessary now

Orginally broadcasted on Thursday 19th March, 14:30

In this session, Helen Pettifer will explore why traditional approaches to vulnerability are no longer fit for today’s customer landscape. Vulnerability has not simply increased — it has changed in nature, complexity and visibility.

Reset | Redefining Outsourcing

For many organisations, outsourcing customer operations has historically been treated as a commercial transaction rather than a professional capability. Contracts are negotiated, suppliers are appointed, and governance frameworks are established to monitor performance. Yet despite the scale, complexity and strategic importance of these relationships, outsourcing is rarely managed with the same discipline applied to areas such as workforce planning, customer experience design or operational transformation. This gap is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Webinar: See the WFM AI Assistant in Action in partnership with Sabio

WFM AI Assistant: Real-Time Intelligence for Smarter Workforce Decisions
Spot problems early. Understand the cause. Fix them immediately.
Managing workforce performance in real time has never been more complex. Volumes spike unexpectedly, AHT drifts, shrinkage creeps up — and by the time daily reports arrive, the damage is already done. The Sabio WFM AI Assistant changes that.

The WFM AI Assistant is a platform-agnostic AI solution that draws real-time data from:
 - Contact centre platforms
 - WFO and analytics platforms
 - HR systems
 - CRM solutions

Webinar: From Insight to Impact: How IGLU Is Using Quality & Analytics to Drive Operational Performance in partnership with Calabrio & Business Systems

Operational leaders are under increasing pressure to improve performance, maintain service quality and demonstrate measurable impact - all while managing rising demand and increasing complexity across channels.

In this session, we’ll explore how IGLU is using Quality Management and advanced Analytics within its WEM platform to move beyond compliance reporting and towards true operational control.

Featuring practical insight from IGLU’s recent WEM journey, alongside perspectives from Calabrio and Business Systems.

Benchmarking Sickness: Resetting How We Read the Numbers

Our latest shrinkage benchmarking survey shows average sickness absence at around 8%. At first glance, this appears higher than last year’s 7.6%, suggesting an upward trend. That conclusion would be misleading.

Webinar - The Harrods Story: What It Really Took to Turn Data into Excellence in Partnership with Calabrio

We’re excited to invite you to something truly special.

Join Calabrio for an exclusive webinar on 20th May at 12pm, where we’ll go behind the scenes with Harrods, one of the world’s most iconic luxury brands, renowned for its uncompromising focus on customer experience and excellence.

This is a rare opportunity to hear directly from Liz Whitehouse, Harrods Analytics Analyst, as she shares an honest, practical look at what it really takes to embed analytics and drive value.

RESET | REDEFINING

Across Customer Operations and Resource Planning, there is a growing realisation: we are still relying on outdated assumptions, legacy habits, and inherited “best practices” that no longer fit the complexity of today, let alone the volatility of tomorrow. To prepare for 2026 and beyond, organisations need more than incremental  improvement.
 

Agentic AI in Practice: Transforming Contact Centres and Beyond

Agentic AI marks a new era in enterprise automation. Unlike traditional bots or scripted workflows, Agentic AI introduces autonomous digital agents that can reason, adapt and act independently within defined boundaries. These agents are not just reactive tools; they are proactive collaborators, capable of navigating complex tasks, learning from interactions and driving measurable outcomes.

This article explores how Agentic AI is reshaping contact centres, from customer experience and service delivery to planning and operational improvement. It will also highlight broader applications across sectors.

Webinar: The Manager's New Toolkit: Closing the Action Gap in the AI Era in Partnership with Centrical

Frontline managers have never had more performance data, and never had less time to act on it. Signals are scattered across QA, WFM, LMS, CRM, and a growing stack of dashboards. Now AI agents are joining the workforce as a new layer to oversee, and the gap between performance insight and performance change is widening fast.

This is the action gap. Closing it is the defining challenge facing frontline leaders this year.

Join Ian Chappell, Director of Consulting, EMEA at Centrical, for a practical follow-up to The Forum's Best Practice Showcase. Ian opens with a look at why most platforms are widening the gap rather than closing it, then previews three Centrical capabilities built for the manager's job in a hybrid human-AI workforce.

Customer Strategy & Planning

Breaking the Failure Loop and Building a Sustainable Path to Success

A joined-up approach to customer strategy is the difference between firefighting and sustainable success. This article explores how short-term performance measures, long-term performance indicators and a culture of learning can break the failure loop and position Resource Planning as the strategic brain, cultural heart, and operational nerve centre of today’s contact centre.

Customer Expectations: Resetting Our Assumptions

In a recent networking group, customer experience professionals were asked to reflect on their own expectations as customers and how these compare with the expectations of the customers they serve. The themes that came back were consistent. They show what people really value in service interactions, and where organisations most often fall short. This article explores those insights and the practical lessons they offer for designing experiences that meet customer expectations reliably and effectively.

Be Bold & Transformational

How to start doing something differently today through preparedness, luck & the power of resetting.

Workforce Leadership: Building a Future- Focussed Culture in Resource Planning

Workforce leadership is about more than managing schedules and hitting service targets. It’s about keeping the future in mind while navigating today’s pressures, breaking free from firefighting, building a culture of learning and leading with a solution mindset that drives innovation, resilience, and long-term success.

The Evolution and Future of Resource Planning: From Ratios to Strategic Enabler

As Resource Planning evolves from an administrative function to a strategic enabler, organisations must look beyond ratios and benchmarks to design teams that deliver value today while preparing for the future.

The Power of Invisible Wins

We often celebrate the fires we fight, not the ones we prevent. Yet true operational excellence lies in the quiet victories, the failures that never happened. These Invisible Wins reflect foresight, planning and good decisions. They form the hidden backbone of high-performing operations and recognising them means looking beyond the noise and valuing the work that stops issues forming in the first place.

Forecasting: Embrace the Unpredictable

Effective contact centre forecasting is often about eliminating uncertainty but it doesn’t have to be; it can be about deliberately planning for it. By viewing demand as a probability rather than a promise, you have the option to transform ‘residual noise’ from a source of failure into a strategic buffer that stabilises your operations.

The Power of New Perspectives: How Rising Stars Help Shape Change

Every year, we see through our awards programme, new waves of emerging talent. They show us that being fresh to a role is not a weakness but a catalyst for progress. These individuals step into unfamiliar territory and use their curiosity, learning agility, and instinct for improvement to reshape systems that have gone unchallenged. Their stories reveal a common truth: when someone is unburdened by history, they can see possibilities others have stopped noticing.

Rethinking Skills in the Age of AI

As organisations move into a new era of work, we are being pushed to reset long-held assumptions about what capability looks like. Much like customer operations, our own skills and habits carry legacy thinking that no longer fits the world we now work in. AI is accelerating this shift. It challenges the skills we grew up with, changes how expertise is built and forces us to redefine what great looks like. This article explores that reset. It looks at the concerns people have today, the skills we may need to let go of, the new skills that will matter most and how we can use AI intelligently rather than passively. If we want to stay ahead, we need to rethink not just the tools we use, but the foundations of how we learn, decide and create value.

But to shape the future we first need to learn from the past...