What is Scheduling?

Contact center scheduling is a workforce management activity in which agent work schedules are created based on a variety of factors, mainly expected contact volume and agent availability and skillset. Good scheduling balances customer demands (volume) with efficient use of labor. It can be a complicated balancing act - schedule too few agents and your average speed of answer (ASA) might skyrocket; schedule too many agents and your labor costs will grow. It's a classic case of trying to satisfy both the customer and the CFO.

Scheduling is a dynamic process, so even the best schedules are likely to change after they get published. Agents call in sick, queues blow up, volume comes in much lower than forecast. Just another day in the life of a contact center. All of these events may require intraday scheduling changes to ensure you have agents in the best, most productive place at any given time, while not sitting idle.

Making quick, effective schedule adjustments like this can be difficult for workforce managers if they don't have the right software. But modern solutions allow them to make these changes in a snap. Good scheduling tools not only support intraday adjustments - they also enable contact centers to easily promote agent-friendly practices, such as preferred schedules, agent time-off requests, flex schedules, and work from home days. Additionally, the best scheduling tools support agent schedule swaps and shift bidding. So, ultimately, today’s workforce managers can satisfy not only customers and the CFO – but agents too! Now that's a win!

How NICE can help

Our smart, flexible scheduling tools enable workforce management success that will please all major stakeholders.

NICE CXone is the market leading contact center software in use by thousands of customers of all sizes around the world to help them consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences. CXone is a cloud native, unified suite of applications designed to help a company holistically run its contact center operations. CXone includes:

Omnichannel Routing – routing and interaction management that empowers agents to positively and productively interact with customers in digital and voice channels. These solutions include an automatic call distributor (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), interaction channel support and proactive outbound dialer.

Workforce Optimization – unlocks the potential of your team by inspiring employees' self-improvement, amplifying quality management efforts to enhance customer experience and reducing labor waste. These solutions include workforce management (WFM), quality management (QM), recording and performance management (PM).

Analytics – turns insights into results by making data relevant, easy to consume and actionable to drive measurable improvements and understand the omnichannel experience customers receive. These solutions include interaction analytics, customer surveys, reporting and performance management.

CXone also includes pre-defined CRM integrations and UCaaS integrations with most leading solutions on the market. These integrations provide a holistic contact center software solution capable of elevating customer experiences for companies of all sizes.