Contact centers have a talent crisis. With attrition rates hovering between 35-45% and replacement costs reaching upward of $15,000 per agent, organizations can’t afford to treat workforce management as an afterthought. Yet many do exactly that, deploying all-in-one platforms that promise everything but excel at little.
I recently met with Lon Koontz, Tina Ghanem, and Alain Mowad from Aspect Software to understand why their customers — including several “boomerang” clients who left for integrated CCaaS platforms — keep returning. What emerged was a story about outcomes that competitors struggle to match.
This analysis reflects our ongoing work with both technology providers seeking to refine their market positioning and corporate members evaluating workforce engagement platforms for their contact centers.
Aspect’s recent history matters. After merging with Noble Systems to form Alvaria in 2021, the company split back out in 2024 to reclaim its brand and focus. Where Aspect previously faced constraints tied to Alvaria’s ecosystem, it can now integrate freely with any contact center platform, including direct competitors like Genesys and NICE.
More critically, the independence unlocked R&D investment. Roughly 43% of Aspect’s team now focuses on research and development. Combined with recent debt restructuring that freed up capital, Aspect is positioning itself as a pure-play Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) specialist while competitors spread resources across broader portfolios.
Where Competitors Stand
Understanding Aspect’s value requires context on the competitive landscape. Through our ongoing technology selection advisory work with contact center leaders, we’ve identified clear patterns in how major WEM platforms deliver — and where they disappoint:
- NICE CXone WEM offers comprehensive tools spanning workforce management, quality assurance, and AI-powered forecasting. Suite breadth comes at the cost of depth in specific areas like complex union scheduling.
- Genesys Cloud WEM features native integration within the Genesys Cloud platform, which simplifies deployment for existing customers. It features AI-powered forecasting with 25+ machine learning models, but has limited flexibility for organizations not using Genesys as their primary CCaaS.
- Verint Workforce Management features high satisfaction scores and is pursuing CX automation with specialized bots. It gets criticized for an outdated user interface and limited customization options.
- Calabrio ONE is a dedicated WEM specialist with unified suite architecture, strong analytics integration and the recent Echo AI acquisition for conversational intelligence. It is primarily focused on the mid-market segment, with less enterprise-scale proven in complex environments.
What Aspect Does Differently
The briefing revealed three technical differentiators that explain why customers return:
Complex Compliance at Scale
Aspect bakes security and compliance into platform architecture rather than layering it on afterward. The system encodes complex labor rules, such as union agreements, working time regulations, overtime thresholds, minor worker protections and meal breaks, and enforces them consistently across deployments. One customer chose Aspect specifically because other platforms couldn’t handle their union requirements. Another financial services organization saved $2.3 million annually through improved compliance and scheduling accuracy.
Real Intelligence vs. AI Theater
While competitors trumpet generative AI and chatbots, Aspect is training machine learning models on decades of workforce data. Their latest release introduces AI-powered call volume forecasting as the first output of this work, with automatic schedule updates scheduled to follow soon.
Director of Product Tina Ghanem explained their approach: “We’re using our data, the wealth of information we have within the years we have been around, and we’re layering through different machine learning models to take our data to help our customers make decisions faster in real time.”
The practical application: Instead of supervisors managing software, the software surfaces the right decision at the right moment based on adherence patterns, volume fluctuations, and historical performance. A forecast dashboard lets planners compare statistical models against machine learning models, with multi-model forecasting rolling out quarterly.
White Glove Implementation That Actually Works
The phrase “white glove service” appears in most vendor presentations. Aspect’s version means something specific: concierge onboarding, continuous enablement, and proactive support that treats implementation as the beginning rather than the end of the relationship.
Customers report results that validate the approach:
- Asurion achieved 62% engagement in mobile scheduling while saving 2,500 administrative hours
- A Fortune 500 company reduced average handle time by 36%, driving $9.5 million in annual savings
Who Should Consider Aspect
Based on the briefing and customer examples, Aspect serves specific organization types well. Our benchmarking assessments with contact center operations reveal these ideal fit profiles:
Enterprise contact centers with complex scheduling needs. Strategic-tier customers in financial services, telecommunications and healthcare benefit from Aspect’s ability to manage multi-site operations, diverse skill requirements and regulatory complexity. If your scheduling rules require a legal team to interpret, Aspect’s encoded compliance matters.
Organizations navigating union environments. Airlines, utilities and public sector organizations with collective bargaining agreements need WEM that understands shift bidding, seniority rules and grievance prevention. Aspect’s specific strength here differentiates it from CCaaS vendors treating union scheduling as an edge case.
Boomerang candidates from all-in-one platforms. Companies that implemented systems believing “integrated is better” often discover that integrated doesn’t mean comprehensive. If your current CCaaS platform’s WEM module delivers surface-level functionality without the depth your planners need, Aspect’s platform-agnostic approach lets you add best-of-breed WEM without replacing your entire infrastructure.
Back-office operations expanding beyond contact centers. Aspect is increasingly serving frontline workers in warehouses, retail operations and other shift-based environments. Organizations looking to unify workforce management across customer-facing and operational teams find value in Aspect’s flexibility beyond traditional contact center applications.
High-attrition environments prioritizing agent experience. Companies implementing Aspect League (gamification) report 60% improvements in employee retention. If your replacement costs justify investment in engagement tools, Aspect’s employee-centric design addresses attrition through technology rather than just policy.
The Positioning Challenge
For all its technical strength, Aspect faces a messaging problem. This is where our work with technology providers becomes valuable. Through our advisory services and Solution Provider Profiles, we help vendors translate technical capabilities into messaging that resonates with buyers facing specific operational challenges.
Aspect’s opportunity lies in articulating more clearly what makes them stand out:
- Making union scheduling manageable instead of a compliance nightmare.
- Enabling boomerang customers to return without ripping out their CCaaS platform.
- Delivering ROI that’s measurable in weeks rather than quarters.
- Training AI models on 50 years of workforce data instead of chasing generative AI trends.
What This Means for the Market
Aspect’s approach represents a bet on specialization. While NICE and Genesys pursue platform consolidation and Verint pivots toward CX automation, Aspect is doubling down on workforce management depth. The strategy works when:
- Organizations value best-of-breed over integrated.
- Workforce complexity requires dedicated expertise.
- Implementation quality matters as much as feature lists.
- Long-term partnership trumps transactional software relationships.
It struggles when:
- Buyers prioritize vendor consolidation over capability.
- Marketing volume outweighs technical differentiation.
- IT preferences favor single-vendor architectures.
- Budget owners don’t distinguish between WEM solutions.
The “boomerang customer” phenomenon — organizations leaving for integrated platforms, discovering limitations and returning to Aspect — suggests the market undervalues WEM specialization until complexity forces recognition. Aspect’s challenge is reaching buyers before they learn this lesson the expensive way.
