What is scheduling?
In a contact centre, agent's time is carefully scheduled to allow businesses to accurately, and efficiently, match supply and demand and provide great service to customers.
By forecasting the expected number of contacts you will receive and converting that into a staffing requirement, you can ensure that you have the right number of agents, with the right skills, available at the right time.
Scheduling in Surfboard: A basic overview
In Surfboard, schedules are built up in two stages, allowing for flexibility.
First, you plan shifts.
This defines the times of day agents will come to work including time off and vacation planning. At this stage, businesses are trying to match the required head count as indicated by the forecast, while staying within the contractual or labour law requirements of agents and creating a fair distribution of shifts.
Often teams will create and publish shift schedules weeks or months in advance, to allow agents to have a better work/life balance.
Then, you fill these shifts with activities.
This defines the tasks agents will do while they're at work. At this stage, schedulers are trying to closely match the forecast requirement per channel, per interval (e.g. every 30mins of the day). It is common for teams to create varied schedules to provide more variety for agents, while providing them with adequate rest time.
Teams tend to create activity schedules at a shorter notice, anywhere from 2-7 days ahead of time. This is so they're using the most accurate version of the forecast possible.
All editing is done in draft. Schedules are published when ready to share.
Any edits you make to the schedule, whether its editing a shift, or adding additional activities, will be made in draft.
Only admins can see draft schedules.
To share the schedule with your agents, you need to publish it. This publishes the version of the schedule at that point in time to agent's Surfboard accounts.
You can publish schedules multiple times to share the latest changes with your team, including shifts with or without activities.
How to build a schedule from start to finish
Before we get started, you need to ensure you have the following set-up:
You've connected your customer service or CRM platforms. Learn more
You've set-up your forecast using ticket groups. Learn more
You've connected your time off calendars. Learn more
You've added all of your agents and set-up their profiles. Learn more
If you're all set-up, then we're ready to start scheduling!
Step 1: Create a Shift Plan
The easiest way to schedule at scale is using a Shift Plan.
A shift plan is a reusable template that you can use to plan your team's fixed or rotating shift patterns, as well as round robins.
For newly onboarded teams, we recommend that you create a Shift Plan that mirrors your team's current ways of working, or pre-planned shifts.
If your team are very flexible, and don't work fixed shift patterns, then you may prefer to use the auto-schedule tool to match agents with the perfect shift - balancing coverage and contractual requirements. Read more
If you use this option, you can skip to Step 3.
Step 2: Apply the Shift Plan to the schedule
Now, you need to apply the Shift Plan to the schedule.
To apply a shift plan:
Navigate to Schedule > Week
Click the Tools button and select Apply shift plan
Select the Shift Plan you want to apply and the period you want to apply it for. Most teams prefer to share their shift schedules at least 4 weeks ahead of time, to allow agents to plan their persona lives around their shifts.
Click Apply
Once applied:
Planned shift patterns will be added to the schedule. If shift patterns are >1 week long, then they will be rotated.
Round robin shifts will be assigned to agents, cycling through them to fairly distribute shifts.
Any conflicts where a shift clashes with synced time off will be flagged, so you can find cover.
You will see feedback on your scheduled staffing vs forecasted required staffing in the coverage bar.
Tips:
If there is an issue with the Shift Plan, or you made a mistake, you can remove it from the schedule by using clear shifts tool. Click the Tools button and select Clear shifts.
You can also manually edit the schedule at any time by clicking on shifts or by clicking into empty space.
You may want to choose to publish this shift schedule at this stage, so your agents have visibility over their upcoming shifts. Click the Publish button in the schedule.
Step 3: Create an Activity Plan
In Surfboard activities are scheduled within shifts.
You've already defined the hours which agent's will come to work, but now you need to define which tasks they'll do while they're at work.
The easiest way to do this is to create an Activity Plan.
An Activity Plan is a set of rules which define the breaks, service (e.g. Phones, Chat) and non-service work (e.g. Training, Admin) that your team works on each day.
Surfboard uses these rules to dynamically generate schedules to meet your defined targets and constraints, with whatever staff are available each day.
Step 4: Apply the Activity Plan to the schedule
Now, you need to apply the Activity Plan to the schedule to fill the shifts.
To apply an activity plan:
Navigate to Schedule > Day
If the left-hand toolbar is not already open, click Add activities
Hover over the Activity Plan you want to apply and click the '...' button. Then, select Apply activity plan
Select the period you want to apply it for. Most teams prefer to plan their activity schedules 2-7 days ahead of time.
Click Apply
Once applied:
Activity schedules will be generated based on the number of agents with shifts each day.
Any synced calendar events will be scheduled around.
You will see feedback on your scheduled staffing vs forecasted required staffing in the coverage bar.
Tips:
You can edit an activity plan at any time, if you edit the plan, you'll need to apply it again to push the changes into the schedule.
Many teams choose to edit their rules week-to-week to reflect their priorities, e.g. adding additional training time, or deprioritising non-serve work to deal with peaks.
You can manually edit the activity schedule at any time.
Step 5: Publish the schedule
Your schedules should now be complete and you are ready to share the schedule with the team.
To share the schedule with your agents, you need to publish it. This publishes the version of the schedule at that point in time to agent's Surfboard accounts.
You can publish schedules multiple times to share the latest changes with your team, including shifts with or without activities.