If your customer service or CRM platform is not supported by Surfboard, then you can generate forecasts using data from your system via a CSV upload.
What can I do with a CSV forecast?
Uploading a CSV of your historical data will enable you to:
Generate a forecast
View your historical data
Break down your volume into ticket groups that represent the queues, channels or inboxes that your agent's work on
Schedule according to the forecasted demand
Please note: This will only provide a forecast, Surfboard is unable to track agent performance from CSV data.
How to prepare your data for upload
Step 1: Export the data from your system
The data you need can be exported from your customer service or CRM platform.
You need to export:
Data for each queue, channel or inbox that your agent's work on individually - this is so you can forecast the required staffing for each activity
The last 12 weeks of data
A count of tickets per hour, with timestamps
Step 2: Format your data
To be uploaded, the data needs to be supplied as a .csv file, and needs to be prepared in a specific format. Details are as follows:
A 'timestamp' column that has every hour of the day for the date range provided
A 'count' column for the ticket count per interval
1 column count per ticket group
Shared in UTC timezone
With the timestamp column in the format provided in the template
Step 3: Provide your SLAs and productivity inputs
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.
Average handle time (AHT) or Average conversation time (ACT): How long it takes an agent to close a ticket,
Provided in seconds, e.g. 300s
Concurrency: How many conversations agents can handle at once,
Provided as a single number, e.g. 1
Shrinkage (%): The % of time agents time that is lost while they're working on this channel, such as meetings, unplanned breaks, talking to colleagues
Provided as a %, e.g. 30
SLA (first response time): The % of contacts you want to respond to in your target time
Provided as a % and single number, e.g. 90% in 60s
Step 4: Create a ticket via chat
Open up our chat widget (found by clicking the question mark icon in the top right of your Surfboard account)
Click 🔗 Integration set-up > 📂 Provide CSV for forecasts
Create a ticket and add your CSV and details.
A member of our team will prepare the forecast and let you know when it is complete.
You will be able to see your uploaded ticket groups in the ticket group page.
FAQs
How often should I provide new data?
We suggest initially sharing 3 months of data as this will give you a fairly robust forecast. Following this point, we suggest a monthly upload to keep your data fresh.
Can I edit these ticket groups?
No, if you need to make a change, e.g. tweak your SLA, you will need to ask our team. Send a message on Intercom chat and we can help.