For a customer support team of about 30 agents on live chat and phones, the best workforce management (WFM) software in our ranking is Assembled, then Lorikeet Workforce Manager, then Zendesk WFM if your team already runs on Zendesk. Calabrio WFM is the pick when voice is most of your volume and you want an established contact center suite, and NiCE and Verint suit large, multi-site centers with a dedicated planning team.

We ranked 10 tools for support teams of roughly 20 to 200 agents, using only what each vendor publishes today. Assembled leads because it is built for support queues, publishes per-agent prices and manages the day live. Only 5 of the 10 publish a price that clearly covers WFM.

Key takeaways

• For 20 to 200 agents on chat and phones, shortlist Assembled, Workforce Manager and Zendesk WFM (Zendesk teams only); add Calabrio when calls dominate.

• Published WFM prices: Assembled $25, $45 or $75 per agent per month plus a platform fee; Zendesk's Workforce Engagement Bundle US$50 per agent per month paid yearly; Soon $8 to $16 per user per month. Talkdesk ($165) and Genesys ($155) include WFM in full contact center seats.

• Live intraday management is the dividing line. Assembled, Soon, Calabrio, NiCE and Verint describe it, and Workforce Manager now "manages the day as it happens" (in-day management), per Lorikeet; Zendesk WFM tracks adherence in real time.

• Chat and phones need separate forecasts: an agent allowed 3 chats behaves like about 2.5, not 3.

• UK rosters must pass the Working Time Regulations: 11 hours' rest between working days, a 20-minute break over 6 hours and a 48-hour average week.

How we chose and checked these tools

We started from the WFM tools support teams most often shortlist, read each vendor's own product, pricing and FAQ pages on 6 November 2026, and ranked them on six criteria, weighted toward teams of 20 to 200 agents:

1. Fit for support teams running live chat and phones, not only voice queues.

2. Whether a team lead can run it without a dedicated WFM analyst.

3. Working-rule checks: contracted hours, rest, skills and leave.

4. Published pricing you can budget from before a sales call.

5. Live intraday management today, not on a roadmap.

6. Planning that accounts for AI agents taking part of the volume.

Lorikeet publishes this guide and is one of the platforms compared. We checked competitor details on their own websites in November 2026; if something has changed, tell us and we will update the page.

We did not use G2 or Capterra ratings because we could not verify them consistently. We checked Aspect and left it out as enterprise-focused for this team size. CX Today reported that Playvox is now part of NiCE; we could not find a current Playvox WFM product page, so it is not ranked.

The 10 WFM tools compared

Three types of WFM software

New to the terms? Our WFM glossary entry covers forecasting, adherence and shrinkage.

1. Assembled: support-first WFM with published prices

Best for: digital-first support teams, including those using BPOs, that want forecasting, scheduling and intraday management in one tool.

What it does: Assembled's pricing page lists ML-based forecasting, AI-powered scheduling, automated intraday management, real-time adherence monitoring and human-AI workforce planning. It says many customers can go live within a month.

Pricing: WFM Core $25, Pro $45 and Enterprise $75 per agent per month. Its FAQ says WFM is priced per agent per month plus a platform fee, whose amount is not published.

Limit: AI schedule generation, ML forecasting, automated time off and shift swaps start at Pro, so budget for the $45 tier plus the platform fee.

2. Lorikeet Workforce Manager: built for teams of 20+ agents on chat or phones

Best for: support teams of 20+ agents running live chat or phones who build rosters by hand today, the team the launch post says it was built for.

What it does: builds the roster from your ticket and call volume by channel, day and hour, and turns that volume into a staffing forecast you can fine-tune for known events like a sale or launch. Each week starts as a draft checked against contracted hours, rest between shifts, channel skills, approved leave and demand before you publish. Under-covered shifts are flagged with suggestions of qualified, available agents. Coverage reports show gaps by channel and hour, and capacity planning shows shortfalls up to 12 months ahead, factoring in growth. You can import a roster model from a spreadsheet or helpdesk export.

Pricing: Workforce Manager pricing is not published, and no integration list is published either. There is a 30-day free trial.

Why second, not first: it matches this page's team size, channels and rule checks most directly, and Workforce Manager now "manages the day as it happens" (in-day management), per Lorikeet. That meets our fifth criterion, live intraday management. It ranks above Zendesk WFM, which publishes a price but is built for teams on Zendesk and describes real-time adherence tracking rather than in-day re-planning. It ranks below Assembled because it launched on 7 October 2026 and neither its price nor its integrations are published, while Assembled publishes per-agent prices and lists human-AI workforce planning.

3. Zendesk WFM: the default if you already run Zendesk

Best for: teams whose whole operation lives in Zendesk. Zendesk acquired Tymeshift to bring AI-powered workforce management to its customers, and says customers on any Basic or Suite plan can use Zendesk WFM.

What it does: an AI-powered staffing forecast from historical data for a day, month or season; automatic schedules down to the minute, including training, breaks and ticket types; real-time tracking of agent activity in and out of Zendesk and adherence to schedules; and schedules every agent can see.

Pricing: the Workforce Engagement Bundle (staffing, scheduling, performance management, QA and coaching) is US$50 per agent per month paid yearly, on top of a plan such as Suite Team at US$55.

Limit: it is built for Zendesk. If calls or chats live in another system, check what it can see before you buy.

4. Calabrio WFM (part of Verint): an established suite for inbound centers

Best for: in Verint's words, inbound contact centers that have outgrown manual forecasting and scheduling and want full WFM with fast deployment.

What it does: AI and machine-learning forecasting, a multi-skill scheduling engine that accounts for work-hour legislation, demand and employee requests for 50 agents or 50,000, intraday tools and real-time adherence against live ACD status. Verint says most implementations take a few weeks.

Pricing: not published.

Limit: quality management and advanced analytics are separate solutions. Thoma Bravo combined Verint with Calabrio after closing its Verint acquisition on 26 November 2025.

5. Soon: low-cost AI scheduling with live intraday

Best for: operations teams replacing a spreadsheet who want published prices and a same-week start.

What it does: Soon auto-fills shifts while respecting contracts, availability, skills, fairness and labor law, forecasts demand from historical patterns at 15-minute intervals, and offers drag-and-drop intraday changes and employee self-scheduling. Its pricing page says most teams are live the same day.

Pricing: published: Grow $8 and Scale $16 per user per month, a $4 Start plan marked coming soon, Enterprise tailored, and free trials of 14, 30 or 60 days by plan.

Limit: it is built for operations teams in general and does not name helpdesk or contact center integrations, so check how ticket and call volume gets in.

6. Peopleware (formerly injixo): an AI-native suite for contact centers

Best for: contact centers and outsourcers that want a full WFM suite with guided delivery. injixo.com now redirects to Peopleware.

What it does: short, mid and long-term forecasting with predictive AI, capacity plans that compare staffing strategies by capacity and cost, AI-optimized shift plans under complex constraints, real-time schedule changes, automated time off and time tracking for compliance and payroll.

Pricing: custom quote.

Limit: pricing and setup are tailored per customer, so expect a scoped project rather than a self-serve trial.

7. Talkdesk WFM: for teams already on Talkdesk

What it does: Talkdesk lists AI forecasts from historical and real-time data, scheduling from shift templates, break rules, agent skills and KPI goals, manual forecast edits and intraday adjustments, adherence monitoring.

Pricing: its Elite plan is $165 per user per month and lists Workforce Management.

Limit: you are buying a full contact center seat, which only makes sense if Talkdesk runs your phones.

8. Genesys Cloud CX 3: WFM inside a contact center platform

What it does: Genesys describes CX 3 as being for omnichannel contact centers with full workforce engagement capabilities, and its pricing page lists workforce management, forecasting and scheduling alongside routing, quality and analytics.

Pricing: $155 per user per month billed annually.

Limit: like Talkdesk, it is priced as a contact center seat, so it suits teams moving their phones and chat to Genesys.

9. NiCE WFM (CXone and IEX): depth for large centers

What it does: NiCE says its forecasts use more than 45 patented algorithms, with forecasting, scheduling and real-time staffing changes across chat, SMS, social and voice, self-scheduling and shift bidding, and integrations with ACD, CRM and HR tools. Long-term planning and back office are add-ons.

Pricing: NiCE publishes CXone suites at $110 to $249 per agent per month and lists Workforce Management in its suite table; the page text does not show which suite includes it.

Limit: most of the value assumes the wider CXone platform.

10. Verint WFM: enterprise governance and labor-law depth

What it does: Verint lists forecasting across voice and asynchronous channels, long-term capacity planning, schedules built to demand, labor laws and preferences and intraday alerts.

Pricing: not published.

Limit: Verint says Verint WFM is for enterprises with deeper structural, governance and regional labor law needs, and points teams moving off manual processes to Calabrio.

What WFM software works for support teams running live chat and phones?

WFM software for live chat and phones has to forecast and staff each channel separately, hour by hour, because a phone agent takes one call at a time while a chat agent runs several conversations. Assembled forecasts by queue, channel or site, and Workforce Manager builds rosters and coverage reports by channel and hour.

Chat concurrency is not phone occupancy. Call Centre Helper adapts Erlang C for chat by dividing handle time by a concurrency factor: agents allowed 2 chats behave like 1.7, 3 chats like 2.5 and 4 chats like 2.9, so a 600-second chat at 3 concurrent becomes an effective 240 seconds. Our Erlang C staffing guide walks through the arithmetic, and the free Erlang C calculator applies the concurrency factor for you.

What is the best WFM software for a support team of 30 agents?

For 30 agents, the best WFM software is usually the one your team lead can run without a planner. Published prices for 30 agents, before any platform or base plan fee:

• Assembled Pro: 30 x $45 = $1,350 a month, plus the platform fee.

• Zendesk WFM: 30 x US$50 = US$1,500 a month for the bundle, plus your Zendesk plan.

• Soon Scale: 30 x $16 = $480 a month.

• Talkdesk Elite or Genesys Cloud CX 3: $4,950 or $4,650 a month, including the contact center itself.

Workforce Manager, Calabrio, Peopleware and Verint need a quote or trial; NiCE publishes CXone suites at $110 to $249 per agent per month. For a fuller pricing view, see our guide to call center scheduling software for mid-size teams, and for the hire-or-software question, when a support team needs a WFM analyst.

What should a UK support team look for in contact center workforce management software?

A UK support team should check that every draft roster passes the Working Time Regulations before it is published. GOV.UK sets the core rules for adult workers:

Most workers on a 5-day week get at least 28 days' paid annual leave, so approved leave has to feed the forecast. Calabrio says its engine accounts for work-hour legislation, Verint schedules to labor laws, Soon respects labor law when it fills shifts, and Workforce Manager checks each draft against contracted hours, rest, skills and leave. Confirm how the rules apply to your contracts with an employment adviser.

Is Lorikeet the right fit?

Workforce Manager is built for support teams of 20 or more agents on live chat or phones who want rosters built from real volume and checked against working rules before they publish. It is not the right choice for everyone:

• If you need planning for AI agents spelled out on the vendor's own pages, Assembled lists human-AI workforce planning.

• If you run a large multi-site center with WFM analysts and years of history in an incumbent system, NiCE or Verint fit better.

• If you need a published per-agent price before you trial anything, Assembled and Soon publish theirs.

• If you are under about 20 agents on email only, a spreadsheet may still be enough.

Workforce Manager pricing is not published. Lorikeet's AI concierge is priced separately. Lorikeet publishes its pricing: the Start plan is $2,100 a month and Scale is $5,100 a month (both billed annually), with resolved chat, email and SMS conversations at $0.99 (Start) or $0.90 (Scale) and voice at $1.50 or $1.20. Unresolved tickets and handoffs to a person are not charged. Signature is custom, with a $75K platform fee. Full details are on the pricing page.

To see a roster built from your own volume, read the Workforce Manager launch post or start a 30-day free trial. Weighing Assembled specifically? See our Assembled alternatives guide and the contact center WFM guide.