L to R: Finalist Rachele Scales of Insite Managed Solutions, Finalist Breanne Katrin of Delta Air Lines, WFM Professional of the Year Cooper Taylor of 8x8, Finalist Bill Hodge of USAA, and Finalist Cody Janiga-Stoll of Northwestern Mutual.
The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced Cooper Taylor of 8x8 as the winner of the 2025 Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award, which recognizes a workforce management professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry.
“We are so thrilled to announce Cooper as the winner of this prestigious award,” said Vicki Herrell, SWPP Executive Director. “We believe he is truly representative of the great workforce management professionals around the world. His knowledge, leadership, and vision have helped him achieve great results for his company.”
The other finalists for the award included Bill Hodge of USAA, Cody Janiga-Stoll of Northwestern Mutual, Breanne Katrin of Delta Air Lines, and Rachele Scales of Insite Managed Solutions. The winner of the award was announced at the SWPP Annual Conference, which was held in Nashville, Tennessee on April 22-24, 2025.
Cooper Tayloris Senior Workforce Management Analyst for 8x8. The telecommunications operation handles 11,000 phone, web, chat, and SMS contacts per month in five locations with 250 agents including BPOs. They utilize 8x8 Contact Center and Verint WFM Pro technologies. The WFM team consists of two persons.
Cooper has been with 8x8 for over four years, starting as a Workforce Management Analyst and then receiving a promotion to Senior Workforce Management Analyst role. He has an MBA and is a four-time winner of the 8x8 Super Star award, which is awarded quarterly to the top five individual contributors in the 8x8 Support Department of 400+ employees. He is currently studying for his Certified Workforce Planning Professional (CWPP) certification and the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) designation.
According to Christopher Lathouwers, Workforce Management Program Manager at 8x8, “Cooper is extremely analytical and loves problem-solving. He views the daily management of our phone, chat, and web queues with an inquisitive mind, always looking to figure out the optimal way to ensure our interactions are being answered in the thresholds set to ensure the business is meeting its KPI’s.“
Within 3 weeks of joining 8x8, Cooper single-handedly found all the reports needed to create an Adherence Tracking Report that he updated manually in Excel daily, reporting on the prior days’ adherence for the team. In Cooper’s initial report, the team’s weekly adherence percentage was 32.1%, which was causing missed service levels (SLAs), as well as a phone and chat abandon rate above 20%. Within four months of reporting on Adherence to the management team, the daily adherence had climbed to 72.7%, which was due to Cooper’s diligence in not only reporting the figures to the management team but also taking the initiative to create a weekly checkpoint call with the leaders to discuss individual agent performance to help them to have pinpointed coaching sessions with agents who struggled to follow their schedules.
It was at the 4-month mark into Cooper’s tenure with 8x8 that the Workforce Management team of five quickly became a team of two, as three colleagues left all at the same time. This quick change forced Cooper to pick up and learn the other key areas of the team rapidly to ensure that business results would not be compromised. One crucial piece that Cooper fought for during this transitionary period for the team was to bring in a Workforce Management software that could be utilized to help fill the place of losing 60% of the team without burning the remaining team members out trying to pick up the slack of their former peers. Within two months, Cooper had set up and viewed demo calls with five different software providers and had settled on one as the product that could help them with forecasting, scheduling ,and adherence reporting. Cooper took on the role as the software administrator for the team, ensuring it was set up properly during the implementation phase and that it continues to be maintained and helpful to the team over three years later.
Cooper has helped to overhaul the workforce management program by decreasing phone and chat abandon rates from 22.9% in 2020 down to 3.6% in 2024 through his adherence reporting (both manually in Excel and within the WFM tool once implemented). He also performed the first forecasting for 8x8 and he has been able to reduce forecast variance from 12.1% in 2021 to 6.4% in 2024 which has dramatically helped the management team with their headcount decisions.
Cooper’s forecasting, scheduling, and adherence data has driven the ability to decrease headcount at their BPOs from over 150 agents in 2020 down to 90 agents in 2025 without impacting the underlying KPIs of abandon rate below 5%, ASA of less than 35 seconds, and SLA of 90% of calls answered within 75 seconds.
The SWPP Board of Advisors selected the five finalists from nominations submitted on the SWPP website. The Workforce Management Professional of the Year award is chosen from the five finalists by the Board of Advisors and announced at the 2025 SWPP Annual Conference.
