Calabrio ONE

I use Calabrio ONE  for small retail verticals from one of the projects like Mattel and other pieces as well for delivering the POC at the client side. I was working on almost three to four projects where I have been deeply involved with Calabrio  integrations with Amazon Connect  and C-CAST.

My main use case for Calabrio ONE in those projects is basically for agent forecasting and scheduling. At that time, the native integration with Amazon Connect  was not available, so we were considering other vendors as well, but we went with Calabrio because it was very impressive at that time. The AI insight was phenomenal in terms of reporting and analytics capabilities during what was shown, and it really provided value to the company. Overall, the performance and helping the supervisor with scheduling and forecasting was really good.

Calabrio ONE helped with forecasting and scheduling by evolving in its capabilities over time. When we were moving with C-CAST and Amazon Connect integration, and when we compared with NICE and other vendors we were dealing with, we found Calabrio more sophisticated in terms of advanced forecasting and analyzing the E-S and historical interaction data. The focus on managing holidays as well as weekends and month-end spikes was very quick and intuitive, and very easy to use for generating forecasts for queuing skills and channels. Overall, it helped with the client regarding events like Black Friday when suddenly the spike happens. The historical data and forecasting were increasing in terms of estimating how many agents are required each hour. It was really helpful overall. The performance in terms of agent skill clarifications and time zone management was very helpful because the agents were in different time zones.

The best features Calabrio ONE offers, in my experience, stand out as solving real operational challenges from an operational perspective. Everyone, including the supervisor and other stakeholders, focuses on the operational challenges. Calabrio is evolving not just in forecasting but in forecasting versus actual demand and helping the supervisor make adjustments. I really appreciate the workforce forecasting because Calabrio forecasting uses historical trends to predict the staffing requirement and allows organizations to proactively plan resources instead of just reacting to unexpected call spikes. However, it is far more than just managing unexpected call spikes. I appreciate the self-service features, giving an agent the ability to request leave, swap shifts, and volunteer for overtime, which reduces the supervisor workload and improves the employee experience.

Calabrio ONE has positively impacted my organization by making administrative tasks and forecasting easier. Obviously, the administrative tasks and forecasting things have become easier. This is what overall we integrated Calabrio for and this is what the main functionality we use. It was very quick and easily integrated, not just from the agent perspective and delivery perspective, but also from the integration perspective. Those things were pretty much easier compared to other vendors.

After using Calabrio ONE, I noticed measurable outcomes such as improved schedule adherence, reduced overtime costs, and reduced understaffing and overstaffing because the forecasts were more accurate. More importantly, agent satisfaction improved. With my experience, I can confirm that due to the self-service option with swap and leave request functionality, it really gave a very positive impact.

Calabrio ONE can be improved in the area of predictive workforce planning. I believe predictive workforce planning would be more valuable if the platform could automatically identify unusual patterns, such as forecasting the impact of a new product launch or weather event, rather than relying mainly on historical trends, because something new that the business is coming up with. It would be more focused towards the predictive way. Dashboard customization would benefit from more drag-and-drop dashboard customization for supervisors to make reporting more flexible, similar to JIRA-type functionality, which would be helpful.

There are certain scenarios when we competed with other vendors because nowadays Amazon Connect is also evolving in terms of WFM, but I do understand that the out-of-the-box features are not fully delivering what Calabrio delivers. In terms of thousands of agents across multiple sites, it is still evolving but not at the same level as Calabrio. When we look at other focus areas towards Verint and NICE, obviously we need to improve from that perspective as well when talking about market leaders. I am sure Calabrio is also evolving as a market leader because of the continuous improvement of the performance dashboard and Agent Assist with AI. These are the new features which I am still yet to explore, such as generative AI capabilities. I think Calabrio is still evolving. That feature I am yet to explore, maybe I am not aware of the new things because it has been almost a year since I have been using it.

I have used Calabrio ONE for almost a year.

The self-service options, such as shift swaps or leave requests, have greatly impacted the day-to-day experience for agents and supervisors. There are multiple skills involved in managing scenarios, and this is what I really experienced when managing 100 plus agents. When we talk about large contact centers, it is not possible to manage manually, especially compared to previous engagements with JPMorgan Chase and others, where it is a very cumbersome method. In real scenarios, an agent can easily request to take a leave next Friday or swap an evening shift. The supervisor has to check the staffing level, verify the service level, and each request takes 5 to 10 minutes, and there are 20 to 30 requests per day. That is two to five hours spent on administrative work unnecessarily. Calabrio ONE fills that particular gap, and it is one of the best features I appreciate.

My advice for others looking into using Calabrio ONE is that it is more as per the cost and other things, which is really helpful from that perspective. I would really recommend it in terms of workforce management, especially from the Amazon perspective since I am working with Amazon Connect. First, evaluate whether the native workforce management capability meets your needs. If you require more advanced workforce optimization, sophisticated scheduling, or support for multiple contact platforms, Calabrio ONE is definitely worth considering. I choose an eight as the rating because it delivers strong value, but more AI could be more richly injected in the form of generative AI where I want to see deeper generative AI capabilities rather than just staffing functionalities, such as actions to move three agents from queue A to queue B between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM to maintain the target service level.

My main use case for Calabrio ONE  is that we rely on it most for scheduling and forecasting.

The best features Calabrio ONE  offers are the ability to provide Shift Bags and the capability to approve PTOs automatically, or if there is a requirement for an agent on our team to look into it, the request would go into pending or waitlisted status, and then we can verify if we can approve another day off. That is one of the best features in Calabrio ONE.

CalabrIo ONE has positively impacted my organization. Before, we used Variant, which is a different application compared to Calabrio ONE. Both applications have their strengths, but with Calabrio ONE, I am mostly able to see when an agent is out of adherence, and I can quickly notify them if they have put in the wrong aux, exceeded a break, or if they are stuck on a long call and need their breaks rescheduled. That is something I can easily view on Calabrio ONE.

CalabrIo ONE has increased agent satisfaction to a great extent. When anything goes wrong and agents mistakenly end up putting in a wrong aux, it impacts their schedules and their adherence. When we notify them, they are extremely grateful, and their adherence stays up to date.

In terms of improvements for Calabrio ONE, since I do not work with forecasting, I think we could collaborate AWS  with Calabrio ONE to get live data fed into Calabrio ONE, which would be even greater for forecasting.

We pull the majority of our reports through Calabrio ONE, and something I have noticed is that for the intraday report, if we want to pull data at 12:30, we have to wait until 12:45. It is a 15-minute refresher window, which is lagging behind. This delay is the same for any report being pulled. I do not have a grand overview of forecasting, but it generally takes a long time, and my agents have not been able to collaborate AWS  with Calabrio ONE in the forecasting aspect. Apart from that, everything else is working great on Calabrio ONE. I would love it if it was more real-time and if I could download the data almost immediately without waiting for that 15-minute buffer.

I rate Calabrio ONE a seven because I feel it could be improved. As I mentioned, the 15-minute buffer is an issue, and the real-time feeding into forecasting could be better. If we could control Shift Bags within Calabrio ONE instead of using another application like Teleopti to manage Shift Bags or control overall shifts, that would be even better. Right now, we use a combination of Teleopti and Calabrio ONE to decide the Shift Bags.

The quantity and quality of results provided by Calabrio ONE are accurate 95 percent of the time. The forecasting feature in the application might not be the most accurate, which is an area where we do have issues, especially when scheduling breaks at intervals where calls might be at a higher volume. Those are rigged. Apart from that, since breaks and other meetings get allotted automatically, we do have to manually move them around because that forecasting is not accurate. If that could be improved, it would be great.

I have been using Calabrio ONE for about eight months.

We do not have any issues with Calabrio ONE, but I might have faced issues with the three W365 systems that allow us to access Calabrio ONE.

Calabrio ONE is pretty versatile in terms of growth and changes required. It can analyze how many agents are needed in each interval of the day and ensures to let us know if we need more agents indirectly through all its reports. I would say it is very versatile and also very necessary for our team to grow within the organization.

The customer support for Calabrio ONE is pretty good. They get back to us within 24 to 48 hours if we face any issues or if there are any new updates happening on that end. I am pretty satisfied.

We were using Variant. I would say Variant had many more options. The reason for the switch was that Variant was not collaborating well with the AWS system we implemented. When we implemented AWS, we had to bring in Calabrio ONE to ensure that both systems were coordinated correctly.

I would not say I know how much money we have saved, but according to upper management reports, it does seem Calabrio ONE has been helping a lot. We do have fewer agents required to keep monitoring. The agents we do have on my team are just to ensure that the team leaders and the agents on phones are notified of any changes that impact their adherence. Apart from that, everything is done by Calabrio ONE, so I would say it is good in terms of money saving as well as needing fewer employees.

I want to add that I am not a scheduler; I am an RTA, so my day-to-day use of Calabrio ONE is quite different. I check it to see if anybody is out of adherence, changing day-to-day schedules, moving breaks and lunches, adding any additional meetings and check-ins, and clearing times, as well as requesting any late arrivals or addressing technical issues that agents are facing through the activity responding part in Calabrio ONE, where I would either approve or deny a request after ensuring that it is relevant to what the agent has reported previously. Additionally, what I do with Calabrio ONE is view previous day adherence, previous month adherence, and we go back to correct their adherence where I have the option to approve as adherence, which I do not think many people have the authority to use, but I do. I would go ahead and approve adherence for any out-of-adherence cases, such as if the agent faced a technical issue but was showing as logged out for the day. That is what I use Calabrio ONE for mostly.

With reference to the Shift Bag feature, I would say it is more based on the number of agents we have. We work from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., where we allot four shifts. Every agent works a nine-hour shift in India and an eight and a half-hour shift in the USA, and we try to allocate the majority of the people for the 7:00 a.m. shift, but of course, the 10:15 to 7:15 shift is also important on our end. We try to use forecasting to ensure that the Shift Bags are appropriately set so we have coverage throughout the 7:00 to 7:00 p.m., 12-hour window.

CalabrIo ONE has positively impacted my organization. Before, we used Variant, which is a different application compared to Calabrio ONE. Both applications have their strengths, but with Calabrio ONE, I am mostly able to see when an agent is out of adherence, and I can quickly notify them if they have put in the wrong aux, exceeded a break, or if they are stuck on a long call and need their breaks rescheduled. That is something I can easily view on Calabrio ONE.

CalabrIo ONE has increased agent satisfaction to a great extent. When anything goes wrong and agents mistakenly end up putting in a wrong aux, it impacts their schedules and their adherence. When we notify them, they are extremely grateful, and their adherence stays up to date. In terms of improvements for Calabrio ONE, since I do not work with forecasting, I think we could collaborate AWS with Calabrio ONE to get live data fed into Calabrio ONE, which would be even greater for forecasting.

We pull the majority of our reports through Calabrio ONE, and something I have noticed is that for the intraday report, if we want to pull data at 12:30, we have to wait until 12:45. It is a 15-minute refresher window, which is lagging behind. This delay is the same for any report being pulled. I do not have a grand overview of forecasting, but it generally takes a long time, and my agents have not been able to collaborate AWS with Calabrio ONE in the forecasting aspect. Apart from that, everything else is working great on Calabrio ONE. I would love it if it was more real-time and if I could download the data almost immediately without waiting for that 15-minute buffer.

CalabrIo ONE is pretty versatile in terms of growth and changes required. It can analyze how many agents are needed in each interval of the day and ensures to let us know if we need more agents indirectly through all its reports. I would say it is very versatile and also very necessary for our team to grow within the organization.

I would advise that Calabrio ONE is a good tool to use. If you could get any one of the IT techies to look into how to ensure that AWS is being well maintained with Calabrio ONE, that would be great. I rate this product a seven out of ten.