Earlier this month at The Forum’s Virtual Raising Standards conference, QStory’s Product Director, Barry Jones, caught up with Jodi Maffitt, Department Manager III of Workforce Management at Enova International to find out how implementing QStory transformed their 600-agent contact centre operations in the US.
The Challenge: Delivering Agent Flexibility Without the Manual Overhead
A core philosophy of the WFM team at Enova was to promote schedule flexibility and create win-win situations that supported both their agents’ personal needs and the needs of their customers.
As traditional WFM tools were not capable of supporting the flexibility they desired, Jodi’s team of four analysts were manually processing all agent attendance, voluntary time off (VTO), holiday requests and shift adjustments to achieve that goal.
Whilst they were able to automate the system to allow agents to take time off, they were still having to manually add the owed time back into their schedules. This resulted in the analysts left with little time for critical, strategic tasks such as forecasting, capacity planning and schedule efficiency assessments, and instead spent on tedious administrative work.
“They were feeling a little bit dragged down about being, as you say, ‘glorified admins’ and doing all of these schedule updates. And when it came time to do our forecasting or our capacity planning or schedule efficiency assessment, there was not a lot of time for that.”
Jodi Maffitt, DM III Workforce Management, Enova International
Furthermore, with VTO – unpaid time off, offered to agents to manage troughs in customer demand – managed manually through simple quotas rather than with true workload alignment, this sometimes resulted in the team offering too much VTO which could negatively impact service levels.
The Solution: Intraday Automation & Agent Flex
After meeting at SWPP’s Annual Conference in Nashville in 2025, Enova International partnered with QStory later that year, deploying multiple modules including Intraday Automation, Schedule Optimisation and Employee Engagement. The team rolled out the solution incrementally across teams, with news spreading of the technology throughout the organisation.
Since implementation the technology has transformed Enova’s contact centre operations. QStory automates the repetitive administrative tasks including managing holiday approvals, schedule moves, sickness and lateness reporting, so the WFM team analysts no longer feel like “glorified admins”.
“It’s been quite game changing literally for the Enova WFM team to become less transactional and more analytical.”
Jodi Maffitt, DM III Workforce Management, Enova International
Instead they have more time to spend on critical tasks such as analytical forecasting, capacity planning and schedule efficiency assessments, and focus on their own professional development.
“By automating the admin you can become a lot more strategic, a lot more proactive rather than reacting…You’re hiring smart people in these organisations. Your planners, schedulers and forecasters are deeply analytical in the way they think. You’ve hired them for a reason, let them do that. Anybody can deal with a holiday request, but [give them time] to go and think about the important stuff. Go and shape the future of your organisation.”
Barry Jones, Product Director, QStory
The team is also able to have better conversations with team managers with the Why Detector, QStory’s Natural Language Reporting module, which identifies the root cause of performance, resulting in better, evidence-driven decisions. In regards to VTO, the tool has ensured that the team can be more strategic and precise with offering VTO to ensure agents are getting access to the time off they want, without compromising customer service levels.
“So now, QStory is helping us be way more strategic and precise on when we were offering VTO so that our agents are getting the time off that they need and we’re not hurting our customer experience.”
Jodi Maffitt, DM III Workforce Management, Enova International
From the perspective of the agents, the app with Agent Flex provides them with the schedule flexibility they want, whilst the platform incorporates specific guardrails to keep operational control and prevent schedule moves from negatively impacting the business and customer service. The app was particularly useful during summer 2026 when poor weather conditions led to power outages. The app gave agents a secure, easy way of reporting systems issues to their managers, without operational panic.
What’s Next?
Looking ahead to 2027, Enova and QStory are focused on how artificial intelligence will drive the next evolution of contact centre operations. Rather than viewing AI as a standalone fix, Jodi envisions it as a tool to shift WFM from rigid, rule-based processes to truly flexible frameworks.
“What I think in the contact center space is going to help a lot is using AI enabled tools instead of following strict guideline rules that AI will help us to become more adaptive as opposed to transactional. So AI not being the solution but AI creating more adaptive solutions.”
Jodi Maffitt, DM III Workforce Management, Enova International
In the webinar, Jodi highlighted her excitement for an in-development QStory feature which will help to proactively guide agents towards schedule flexibility options that better support real-time business needs whilst making the platform more accessible for users. Meanwhile upgrades to the Why Detector and new shrinkage forecasting capabilities will provide further analytical use for WFM teams. Ultimately, the partnership is preparing for the complex future of workforce management, particularly exploring how to give organisations the necessary levers to effectively schedule and balance human agents alongside AI agents.