The Hidden Engine Behind High-Performing Contact Centers

In the race to build high performing, cost conscious, and employee first contact centers, Workforce Management often takes center stage for optimizing schedules, controlling costs, and maintaining service levels. But behind the scenes, Performance Management is what turns operational efficiency into sustained success.

As contact centers face rising customer expectations, tighter budgets, and increasing agent attrition, success is no longer just about staffing correctly. It is about helping agents perform better, grow faster, and stay engaged longer.

Performance Management is not a secondary capability. It is a core driver of results in modern contact centers, and with Webex WFO, it is not an optional extra. It is a foundational part of the Workforce Optimization experience.

The Cost Cutting Duo: Workforce Management and Performance Management

When contact centers assess which technologies have the greatest impact on reducing operational costs, Workforce Management consistently leads. Ensuring the right number of agents are scheduled at the right time remains one of the most effective levers for controlling spend.

But cost efficiency does not come from scheduling alone. Performance Management plays a critical role by ensuring agents perform effectively once they are on the floor.

This pairing is intentional. Workforce Management focuses on planning and coverage. Performance Management focuses on execution and improvement. Together, they ensure that staffing decisions translate into real productivity gains and stronger business outcomes.

In Webex WFO, these capabilities work together to connect planning with performance. Forecasts and schedules are informed by actual performance results, while coaching and goal setting are aligned to what the business is trying to achieve.

When combined with Conversation Intelligence, supervisors gain even deeper visibility. Agent behaviors can be connected to customer sentiment, quality outcomes, and operational metrics, creating a complete view of performance that goes well beyond staffing alone.

Driving Efficiency and Employee Engagement at the Same Time

Contact centers today operate under relentless pressure. Teams are expected to deliver more with fewer resources, meet higher service expectations, and remain cost efficient.

In this environment, agent efficiency becomes one of the most critical success factors. Workforce Management improves productivity by optimizing coverage. Performance Management ensures that effort translates into consistent, high-quality outcomes through clear goals, ongoing feedback, and targeted coaching.

This connection is especially important when addressing one of the industry’s most costly challenges: agent turnover. Burnout, lack of clarity, and inconsistent coaching remain leading contributors to attrition. Performance Management directly addresses these issues by giving agents visibility into their performance, progress, and development path.

With Webex WFO, supervisors can move beyond reactive feedback. They are equipped to coach proactively, recognize success in the moment, and intervene early when performance begins to drift, improving both engagement and long-term retention.

What the Top Performers Are Doing Differently

High performing contact centers consistently achieve stronger business outcomes, from higher customer satisfaction to better cost control, even in challenging conditions. What sets these organizations apart is not just the results they deliver, but the practices they prioritize.

While Workforce Management remains foundational, Performance Management follows closely behind as a strategic enabler. Together, they allow supervisors to align day to day performance with long term business goals. Top performing organizations understand that staffing and forecasting alone are not enough. Developing people is equally critical to sustained success.

Why Performance Management Deserves the Spotlight

With Performance Management in Webex WFO, organizations can:

Identify top performers and those who need support using objective, actionable data
Align KPIs with evolving business priorities and customer expectations
Deliver timely, personalized coaching that drives measurable improvement
Foster a culture of accountability, recognition, and professional growth

In a fast-moving contact center environment, efficiency without engagement is short lived. Sustainable success comes from empowering people, not just optimizing schedules.

Performance Management Is a Competitive Advantage

Contact centers are evolving. Supervisors are recognizing that scheduling smarter is only part of the equation. The organizations that outperform their peers are those that invest just as heavily in developing their people as they do in managing their workforce.

Performance Management is not a nice to have. It is a competitive advantage.

For Webex WFO customers, that advantage comes built in. Performance Management is a core part of the platform, helping teams turn insight into action and effort into impact.

Key Capabilities

Centralized Performance Portal: A single, consolidated space where:

Supervisors see team-level performance, recent evaluation scores, and KPI trends.
Agents access their latest evaluation results, performance metrics, and other personalized insights.

This removes the traditional frustration of switching between multiple WFM/QM screens and replaces scattered workflows with a streamlined performance hub.

View My Schedule: Inside the Performance Management dashboard:

Agents can view their daily/weekly schedule.

Supervisors can see their own schedule and understand when coaching or development time is booked.

This helps agents prepare for coaching and gives leaders better clarity into their availability.

KPI Dashboard with Standard WFM & QM Metrics: Supervisors get unified visibility into metrics such as:

AHT
Adherence
Contacts Handled
Fail Rate
QM evaluation & section scores (Resolution, Empathy, Compliance, and so on)

This merges two historically separate workflows, i.e. QM insights + WFM KPIs, into a single performance view.

Create In-App Coaching Sessions: Supervisors will be able to schedule coaching sessions directly within Performance Management, aligned to:

Specific KPIs
QM section trends
WFM performance issues

Sessions will integrate seamlessly into the schedule and appear in the supervisor and agent dashboards.

“With Webex WFO Performance Management, we are setting the stage for the next generation of agent performance assessment, coaching and feedback, at contact centers”
– Willem Evert Nijenhuis, Senior Director, Product Management 

Ready to See Performance Management in Action?

If your contact center is focused on Workforce Management but underinvesting in Performance Management, it may be time to rethink your strategy. The most successful organizations already have.

Discover how Webex WFO helps contact centers drive performance, engagement, and measurable business results. Have a sneak peek of the solution in action at Webex WFO Performance Management.

Webex WFO Performance Management integrates smoothly with these Webex Customer Experience solutions: