WFM Labs Risk Score™
WFM Labs Risk Score™
The WFM Labs Risk Score™ is a proprietary framework designed to quantify the operational risk embedded within your capacity plans, providing leaders with a clear, intuitive indicator of the balance between service level protection, employee satisfaction, and cost control. It enables WFM teams to communicate capacity risk in business terms, empowering the C-Suite to make more confident staffing decisions in the face of demand uncertainty.
As contact centers move up the WFM Labs Maturity Model™ curve, risk-informed capacity planning becomes a core capability—allowing organizations to shift from fragile, single-point staffing estimates to resilient, probability-based workforce strategies.
The WFM Labs Risk Score™ is the result of an advanced planning approach that combines:
- Monte Carlo Simulation – To model demand variability and staffing uncertainty.
- Flexibility Indexing – To quantify your team’s capacity to absorb and adjust to intraday changes.
- WFM Labs Erlang-O™ – To assess the appropriate interval-level overhead, accounting for volatility and real-time adjustments.
These inputs collectively generate a Risk Score, enabling leadership to evaluate staffing plans not just on their cost, but on their resilience to real-world volatility.
Core Components of the WFM Labs Risk Score™
Monte Carlo Simulation – Understanding the Range of Outcomes
Traditional capacity plans aim for a single "best guess" forecast, but every contact center leader knows reality rarely aligns with the plan. Monte Carlo Simulation models thousands of potential demand and staffing outcomes, considering variance across key inputs like:
- Contact volume
- Average handle time (AHT)
- Agent shrinkage
- Occupancy
- Turnover
By simulating these variations, we produce a range of staffing outcomes with associated probabilities, helping leaders see the likelihood of meeting service goals or falling short.
How it influences Risk Score:
- Low Risk Score: Plans with high confidence intervals, showing staffing capacity is resilient across variance scenarios.
- High Risk Score: Plans with narrow margins, high sensitivity to small demand shifts, and frequent understaffing outcomes in the simulations.
Flexibility Index – Measuring Your Adaptability
Forecasts will always be wrong, but your ability to flex is what determines success.
The Flexibility Index measures:
- Intraday Adjustment Capabilities: Can you move breaks, coaching, and training without disrupting the day?
- Cross-Skilling: How easily can agents move between queues or channels?
- Schedule Elasticity: Can you add or reduce staffing hours (e.g., voluntary time off, overtime) in response to demand shifts?
How it influences Risk Score™:
- High Flexibility Index: Reduces Risk Score, because your team can adapt when the unexpected happens.
- Low Flexibility Index: Increases Risk Score, as even small demand shifts can break the plan if schedules are rigid and intraday options are limited.
WFM Labs Erlang-O™ – Building Variability into the Plan
Level 4 in the WFM Labs Maturity Model™ introduces WFM Labs Erlang-O™, which builds operational overhead into interval staffing, acknowledging that:
- Shrinkage varies by interval.
- Demand fluctuates within the day.
- Real-time adjustments are inevitable.
Rather than staffing for a "perfect day," WFM Labs Erlang-O™ bakes volatility into the staff line, reducing reliance on last-minute interventions.
How it influences Risk Score:
- Plans incorporating Erlang-O™ generally yield lower Risk Scores™, as they account for natural variance upfront.
- Traditional static Erlang-C plans often result in higher Risk Scores™, as they assume a false level of precision.
How the WFM Labs Risk Score™ Empowers Decision-Making
The Risk Score™ distills these complex capacity dynamics into a single, executive-friendly indicator, giving leaders a clear view of the resilience and flexibility of their staffing plan:
- Low Risk Score™: Confident capacity plan with built-in resilience.
- Medium Risk Score™: Balanced plan, but requires some intraday flexibility to perform optimally.
- High Risk Score™: Fragile plan, highly vulnerable to demand shifts, with a strong likelihood of service level misses or increased costs.
The Risk Score™ reframes capacity planning from a precision exercise to a probability-informed business decision, allowing leadership to weigh cost vs. risk in context.
Key Benefits of the Risk Score™ Approach
- C-Suite Alignment: Translates WFM complexity into simple, business-oriented language.
- Proactive Risk Mitigation: Identifies fragile plans before they fail, reducing costly overtime and agent burnout.
- Scenario Planning: Supports what-if analyses (e.g., “What happens if volume spikes by 10%?”), empowering data-driven decisions.
- Optimized Staffing: Encourages investment in flexibility (cross-skilling, real-time automation), shifting WFM from reactive to resilient.
How We Help You Leverage the WFM Labs Risk Score™
At Kyōdō Solutions, we:
- Run Monte Carlo simulations on your staffing plans.
- Assess your Flexibility Index based on operational practices.
- Embed WFM Labs Erlang-O™ principles into your staffing approach.
- Deliver a WFM Labs Risk Score™ alongside practical recommendations to reduce risk while optimizing costs.
Whether you’re stabilizing operations at Level 2 or optimizing a risk-informed capacity plan at Level 4, the WFM Labs Risk Score™ ensures you approach staffing with confidence, backed by data—not guesswork.
Ready to De-Risk Your Capacity Plan?
Contact us to learn more.
