What is forecasting?
In a contact centre, it's vital to know the expected volume of calls, emails or messages you are expected to receive so you can schedule enough agents to respond 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.
Forecasting in Dialpad WFM: A basic overview
In Dialpad WFM, there are two stages to start forecasting
First, you integrate your customer service or CRM platforms.
Dialpad WFM needs data on the volumes of contacts your contact centre has historically received so that it can generate a forecast for you.
Then, you map your total volume into the queues, inboxes or channels your agents work on.
At this stage, forecasters need to understand the expected volume per channel so that they can track trends and plan accordingly. In Dialpad WFM this is done with Queues.
Most teams tend to set up queues that represent the main queues, inboxes or channels their agents work on. Although omni-channel agents may work on multiple queues at once, some contact centres choose to break out each queue so they can track volumes at a more granular level.
Finally, the forecasted volume is translated into a staffing requirement.
Additional details on the expected productivity of the team and the desired level of service (i.e. SLA) are required to turn the forecasted volume into something actionable – a staffing requirement.
Dialpad WFM provides a staffing requirement for every hour of the day, for each queue. This then allows contact centres to efficiently match supply and demand when scheduling, and maintain the desired level of service for their customers.
How to set-up your forecast from start to finish
Step 1: Integrate your customer service or CRM platforms
Dialpad WFM supports 11 customer service integrations. You can connect as many systems as required.
Connections can be made by navigating to Settings > Connections. Follow the links below to find the guide for your system:
Aircall - read the guide
Dialpad - read the guide
Dixa - read the guide
Intercom - read the guide
Front - read the guide
Helpscout - guide coming soon, please ask your CSM for guidance.
Kustomer - read the guide
Salesforce - read the guide
Talkdesk - read the guide
Twilio - read the guide
Zendesk - read the guide
Once your connection is made, the system will download 12 months of historical data from your system. This usually takes between 24-48 hours to complete.
The content of tickets are redacted when the data is collected, we only capture the volumes and date/timestamps.
If your customer service platform is not supported, then Dialpad WFM can also offer custom CSV uploads for forecasting. Please ask your CSM for guidance.
Step 2: Create queues
Now you need to map your calls, emails and messages to queues.
Queues allow you to define the different types of tickets your team receives. This then allows the system to forecast the number of contacts for each of your different queues. You can then use this data to schedule your team ensuring you have the right people on the right tasks at the right time.
You can organise queues in a number of different ways. Either by channel such as phone, email or chat or by the way your team is structured such as sales vs support tickets or even languages. Often these will reflect how your tickets are organised inside your customer service platform.
Step 3: View your forecasts!
Navigate to the Forecast page to view your forecast.
From here, you can view your forecast up to 12 months into the future, as well as your actual data 12 months into the past.
If you navigate to the Schedule > Week view, you'll also start to see your forecasted requirement displayed per day. Now, you're ready to start planning shifts.