Define intraday arrival patterns

Define standard workload day templates to describe the typical intraday arrival patterns for each day of the week. These templates detail the distribution of contacts within the day and any variations in handling time and wrap-up time.

Workload day templates are applied to the dates in the forecast to create a detailed forecast with information on how many agents that are needed for each interval of the day.

The workload day templates are created based on historical data. For example, the Monday template is based on the data of all Mondays in the selected historical period. Revise the templates regularly, for example when the customers' behavior is changing or to adjust for seasonal variations in the intraday arrival pattern.

Move through each day of the week and review the table and graph. Adjust values in the table and apply smoothing where necessary.

NOTE   Review and update the workload day templates regularly. How often you need to update them depends on how often the customer behavior changes. For example, update the templates each quarter if the customer behavior is different for different seasons.

Prerequisites

This feature is available to Calabrio GovSuite users.

  • You have the Forecasts permission.
  • A skill and a workload are created.
  • There is validated historical data to base the intraday arrival patterns on.

Page location

This page can be reached from different locations.

  • Client > Forecasts > Prepare workload > Workload day templates tab
  • Client > Forecasts > Open Forecast > Manage Workload > Workload day templates

Procedures

Select historical data to base the workload day templates on

Select one or more periods of historical data to base the workload day templates on. The period that is selected on the tab for the first day of the week is used as the suggested selected period for the other days of the week. 8 weeks is often a good period length. Do not use a too long period, as those averages won't be significant for the templates that you are creating.

  1. In the Select historical data area, click the symbols at the top to select which way to add historical data periods.
    • Define a number of days, weeks, months or years back from the current date.
    • Define a period, with a start date and an end date.
    • Define individual dates.

  2. Define a period and select Add.

    You can add more than one period to base the forecast on. Ensure to select the data that is most relevant for the period that you are about to create templates for.

  3. Click Apply to show the data for the selected periods in the chart.

    If you want to remove one of the selected periods, select it and click Delete. If you want to remove all selected periods and start over, click Clear. Then click Apply again to see the result.

  4. Continue by excluding any non-typical days from the selected data.

Exclude non-typical days from the selected historical data

Exclude days that contain non-typical data so that they do not affect the workload day templates. Focus on the pattern and not the volume.

  1. When historical data has been selected, click Filter data.
  2. Review the chart to identify any non-typical days that could affect the templates in a negative way.
  3. Clear the check boxes for the days you want to exclude. The chart is immediately updated.
  4. Click OK.

Smooth the intraday arrival pattern

Apply a smoothing factor if you want to even out the peaks and troughs in the workload day templates. A higher smoothing factor gives a smoother curve. The smoothing factor considers the surrounding values and calculates an average based on them.

EXAMPLE   Smoothing factor 5 is applied to a template. The new value for each interval is the average calculated based on that interval, the two intervals before and the two intervals after (in total 5 intervals).

  1. When historical data has been selected and non-typical days excluded, select a Smoothing factor in the menu for each measure.

    With a higher smoothing factor, more intervals are used to calculate the average. In most cases that means a smoother curve.

  2. Click Next to go to the next day of the week. Continue to exclude non-typical days and apply smoothing for all days of the week that the workload is open.

  3. Click Finish to save the workload day templates.

    NOTE   The templates are not automatically applied to the forecast. They must be applied manually. See Finalize the staffing forecast for more information.

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