Fundamentals of scheduling

Workforce Management is an integrated set of process which follows a certain cycle as shown below.

In this cycle, all the steps play a major role in Contact Center. Today, in this article we are going to talk about fundamentals of scheduling.

So, what is scheduling?

Scheduling is a process where the agents are informed about their shifts timings so that we have enough people staffed at any given interval to handle the calls.

Why is it so important?

Time is a resource which cannot be recycled or bought. Efficient scheduling makes sure that the time is optimized in the best possible way by having right number of people at the right time with right skills.

In contact center, time is money. So, the most important role of WFM is to reduce the time wastage by efficient scheduling.

Let’s look at the steps for Basic Scheduling Process below

The first step in WFM cycle is forecasting. We forecast the volume and AHT for the future to find out how many People are required to do the job.

In terms of WFM, it is called FTE which stands for “Full Time Equivalent”.

The forecasted volume and the AHT is broken to interval wise (could be 60, 30 or 15 mins) to find out how many Base FTEs is required on an interval level. This exercise is done either by using Erlang or by Linear Workload Method. Erlang is a macro add-in function where we use formulas such as “Fractional Agents” or “Agents ASA”. Linear Workload method is just Calls times AHT converted in hours.

Next Steps…

Once we have interval wise Base FTE required, we will add shrinkage to find out Total FTE required. Later, a basic skeletal shift is assigned to agents and the shift wise count is calculated.

This count is further broken down to interval wise accordingly to the agent’s login and logout time. Breaking down the count to interval wise is called “Intraday Scheduling”.

We will compare both the Total FTE Required and Intraday Scheduled numbers to find out the over and under staffing for each interval.

In the intervals, where the staffing is excess, we can plan for Breaks, Team Meetings, Coaching, Feedback etc. Scheduling plan consists of the actual shifts, planned leaves, planned activities, Shift Swapping or Trading and options to add planned events and holidays if any.

Once we have the schedules finalized, it is ready to be circulated to the team for assigning the shifts. This is called Shift Bidding process.

The Schedules are assigned on First Serve basis which can be basis preference, performance, skill sets or multi-skilling.

Scheduling when done effectively helps us with:

• Understand what goals can be achieved realistically
• Enhance Efficiency and lowers the cost of excess staffing
• Better Customer Experience as the Service Level Goals are met
• Make sure that enough time is allotted for certain tasks
• Have options of contingency for unexpected absenteeism or downtime
• Work towards agent’s up skilling and continuous education
• Make sure the Labor Compliance is maintained
• Help agents to achieve a good work-life balance

Finally, don’t forget to track your actual performance

While we concentrate a lot on creating the most optimized schedules, it is also very important to know how the schedules are working. We must look at the real time report to understand what went wrong and why so that we can use those inputs while creating future schedules.

This is applicable only if the event occurs consistently. All the one-time events should be flagged of considering them as anomaly.

What is the future?

The traditional method of scheduling is slowly vanishing and the contact centers are moving more towards different methods of scheduling such as Agent Preference Scheduling, Gig Economy Scheduling, More flexible Scheduling etc.

Many companies are moving towards the process of enabling agents to select their own schedules while having some constraints to meet the requirement.

More use of AI and tools such as Aspect, Verint, IEX etc. are making the scheduling automate and much easier to learn and implement.

Thank you for Reading

Stay Tuned!!

Disclaimer: This article is purely my personal view and understanding, this doesn’t depict any organization data