HotSchedules is a cloud-based scheduling, labor and communication management software solution serving the restaurant and hospitality industry. According to the vendor, key benefits include: Build & Communicate Schedules The scheduling and labor management software reduces the time it takes managers to create and communicate schedules. All scheduling and employee information is stored in one central location, so managers have access to time-off requests,…
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Verint Workforce Management
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Verint Workforce Management™ is a cloud contact center application that uses automation to simplify forecasting and scheduling staff and bots. The solution scales to accommodate a varying number of employees, channels, schedule types, and request automation to meet the needs of mid-sized to enterprise organizations. Verint aims to help its customers achieve: Lower costs by eliminating overstaffing and unnecessary overtime Reduced attrition rates and increased…
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Pricing
HotSchedules
Verint Workforce Management
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HotSchedules
Verint Workforce Management
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Verint offers a named user pricing model with SaaS and on-premise delivery methods.
For small to medium-sized companies HotSchedules works great when business is very static. If you are simply using HotSchedules for a schedule writing tool, it is phenomenal. However, it does miss the mark as a labor control software. Needs more controls to keep managers aware of spending versus historical sales data.
Verint WFM enables employees to have a predictable schedule that they can control the changes they need to make (creating flexibility and amazing employee engagement). Verint is a nice one-stop shop for all data and metrics with the scorecards, too
Communication is so simple on HotSchedules. Whether it is communicating a new schedule release, or a quick note about tonight's shift we as managers are able to easily communicate and know that it will reach our team through text notifications, or email notifications.
The Meal Break planning tool is very useful in being able to help our floor leaders clearly understand and plan for what breaks are needed throughout the shift. This allows them to come up with a strategic game plan quickly and spend more time with our guests.
Shift Swaps and Releases are so seamless. This is our favorite tool as it makes helping our team cover shifts extremely easy and painless. On the flip side it also makes staff who want more hours be able to find what is available in real time.
Forecasting. We are regularly 97% - 99% accurate on our forecasts.
Performance Management - Verint does an excellent job allowing the business to create custom KPIs and the ability to track employee's performance.
Measuring Back Office workload and Performance - We use DPA with WFM to track administrative tasks and total workload to allow us to create an accurate staffing model.
Clocking In and out can be a little slow. It takes longer to clock in then our previous method. Before we just had a card you swiped and it would clock you in. Took 2 seconds. Now with the Hotschdules method we use it take 30 seconds or so. Not a huge issue but it can add up if you have one computer and a line of employees waiting to clock in.
Time Cards. It does not allow you to view someones current time until the "punch" has ended. If the manager would like to check what time the employee clocked in/out from lunch they have to wait until the employee has clocked out for the day before the record is generated. As a shift lead you may send and employee to lunch but forget to note what time you sent them. Awhile passes and you feel like they should be back by now, so you want to go in and see what time they left for lunch but it does not show you that punch record because the employee is still "clocked in" they are just on their "Meal Break"
The ability to customize the restrictions for Clocking in and out. You can set it up so that employees can only clock in from a specific location, however if you have a manager who is allowed to work from home they would not be able to clock in without being at the same location as set in the software. It would be nice to see it able to be customized per user.
Ability to properly optimize events, classes, coachings, etc for Outbound specific groups.
Having Verint forecast lists for queues after adding historical weeks in.
Removing someone from a class that has moved to another organization and is no longer visible within mine.
No limit on the number of pauses. This is causing a major issue at my company around adherence and a lot of unnecessary time for my team to go in and add exceptions in order to have their adherence look correct.
When submitting a coaching request in the module, give the submitter the ability to select all of their employees but also select only one employee per session. This is the biggest complaint among the staff about using the Coaching Module. They don't like that they have to submit multiple requests for One-on-Ones for each employee and would prefer to submit one request and have it communicated to Verint Workforce Management that there should only be one person in each session.
Sorting by shift event time is no longer an option in the Calendar screen.
I preferred the Calendar screen when I was able to view all employees at once, and now it is limited to 50 per page.
Whilst Verint Workforce Management is doing much of the work we were hoping it would do, there are some limitations that cause hesitancy when deciding if it is the tool for the future. No further exploration has taken place to seek alternatives to date. It is good for the Contact element of our business but not for the rest of the business, meaning we have to use two planning tools currently.
6 Years of Experience provides me the insight on the upgrades and changes that HotSchedules has done to improve the experience of its users. There are so many features that we still have not started or used to the fullest, but we believe that we are currently getting a strong value out of the money that is paid for this product.
For a smaller sized contact center who was previously using excel spreadsheets I feel we have had as of a transition into the program as one could expect. Not only did we go live with a cloud based WFM tool but we also launched a new CRM and telephony system on the same day so it was a lot for our contact center to take in but it has been done with ease
On rare occasions a phone call has been required to find the solution to a problem, the HotSchedules response staff have been helpful, courteous, and genuinely seem to care for their clients and take pride in what they do. The consistent development and fine tuning of the platform, interface, and mobile environment shows that this is not a program full of people who rest on their laurels.
Verint Support is exceptional. I've never had an issue where the Verint Support analyst was lacking knowledge, didn't take the issue seriously, or not tried working with us to fix our quirky setups. Realizing that each business is different, has different needs, and there isn't a cookie-cutter solution for everyone ... Verint Support always continues to shine for us and help us out when needed.
Training was covered in full day sessions that went very fast with no way of recording the information for later review. This made it hard to capture & retain all the details of information.
Training is more broad on specific use cases. It would be good to have training based on our current situations as we deal with so many unique setups & client needs.
The team helping us did a great job training our WFM leaders on how to use the tool from forecasting, to schedule updates to maintenance. They allowed us to be involved in implementation but also did a lot of the initial heavy lifting allowing us to stay focussed on the tasks at hand. It was a great experience and one I would hope occurs again should we ever need to implement a new tool again.
I have not used any other Scheduling software for employees. As a campground manager in the summer season, we are using campground master for reservations. it is very similar in process to employee scheduling. the ability to the user of that program to set up their own parameters for time and reservations is something that would benefit the employee scheduling software.
Another product we use is Intradiem. I don't use it that much and we also use Genesys Decisions, but I feel like Genesys Decisions is completely different from Vernint in itself and there's no comparison for what we use it for because we use it more for forecasting, like scheduling events for our customer service reps to be available at certain on peak and off-peak hours to make sure we have the right staff. And I don't really use it, so we have 10 engineers and we all do different products and I don't use Intradiem that much, so I wouldn't be able to say all good.
Saving time on scheduling means our managers can focus more on guest experience, managing the floor and other areas that contribute to the success of our business.
We were then able to recognize trends and patterns
Once trends and productivity issues were addressed, we could then manage workflow and day to day activities such as training and meetings - ultimately optimizing time, forecasting, and staffing expectations.
Meeting service level goals is now manageable in most cases, allowing improvement across the board.
