Scheduling in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service
Summarize
Summary of Scheduling in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service
Scheduling in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service enables managers and agents to collaboratively plan, publish, and manage work shifts and breaks to ensure effective team coverage. It centralizes schedule management, supports time-off and shift-swap requests, and provides visibility into real-time schedule adherence.
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Key Features
- Role-Based Capabilities:
- Schedulers/Managers: Create and stagger shift plans including breaks, publish schedules, manage time-off and shift swaps, forecast staffing demand at short intervals, monitor adherence with clock-in/out data, manage team schedules across time zones, filter by skills and location, and use mobile approvals.
- Agents: View team schedules, request time off, swap shifts with peers, add personal events, and sync calendars with Microsoft Outlook.
- On-Call Scheduling: Assign dedicated team members for escalation handling through primary and secondary rotation groups.
- Demand Forecasting: View agent staffing forecasts in 15-, 30-, and 60-minute increments directly on the team calendar to optimize coverage.
- Centralized Management: Managers can oversee schedules for multiple teams from a single interface, enabling efficient oversight and adjustments.
Practical Application for Customers
Managers can effectively coordinate large customer service teams by creating shift and schedule plans, publishing them, and managing requests for shift swaps or time off from one central location. Agents gain autonomy to manage their availability, improving satisfaction and operational flexibility. The system supports transparent communication and helps maintain optimal coverage with staggered breaks and real-time adherence monitoring.
For example, a manager overseeing 12 teams with 8-15 agents each can ensure visibility and control over schedules, approve agent requests, and respond to changing availability seamlessly. The integration with Microsoft Outlook facilitates synchronization of team calendars, enhancing daily planning.
Additional Resources
ServiceNow provides video tutorials and detailed documentation on creating shift plans, monitoring team schedules, and agent schedule management for deeper understanding and practical implementation.
Learn how you can plan shifts that include break time for your agents to effectively manage their schedule in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service. Publish schedules to view the agent schedules on the team calendar.
Manage the scheduling for your organization from a central location. Scheduling makes managing team calendars transparent and collaborative between managers and agents. Use On-Call Scheduling with Workforce Optimization for Customer Service to have dedicated team members to resolve issues as they arise.
Managers can use demand forecasting feature to view their agent staffing forecast at 15-, 30-, and 60-minute intervals on the team calendar. Managers can monitor real-time schedule adherence of the agents using clock-in and clock-out events.
Scheduling provides the following capabilities based on your role:
| Personas | Capability | Description |
|---|---|---|
Scheduler (sn_shift_planning.admin) |
Plan | Create shift plans that stagger breaks to support coverage. |
| Schedule | Create schedule plans, view them, and publish the schedule for the next time period. | |
| Manage | Create time-off requests and swap shifts for your agents. | |
| Forecast | Model demand scenarios to analyze agent forecast and view updated demand on the calendar. | |
Agent (sn_shift_planning.agent) |
View team schedule | View when your peers are working and when they are taking time off. |
| Add events | Create events such as a meeting, training, or an ad hoc work shift. | |
| Request time off | Send a request for the span of time you want to take off. | |
| Swap shifts | Trade shifts with your peers. |
The image below provides a high-level overview of the tasks schedulers and agents can perform on the calendar.
- Create shifts to ensure customer coverage for the required span of time.
- Add breaks to the shifts that automatically stagger agent availability for those shifts.
- Preview the schedule and make necessary changes before publishing it to your agents.
- Access the schedule of all of your teams from one location.
- Modify the planned schedules when your team members inform you about their changed availability.
- Manage the schedules of team members working across different time zones.
- Monitor schedule adherence of your agents looking at the time worked summary and time attendance.
- Filter the members based on location, skills and assignment groups.
- Adjust the planned schedules and manage approvals through mobile application.
- Create on-call shifts and assign primary, secondary rotation groups to handle escalation scenarios.
- Look up your schedule and request time off when required.
- Swap your shift with one of your peers.
- View your calendar and your team's calendar across the weeks to plan your work.
- Synchronize your team calendar and events with Microsoft Outlook.
Example
Understand how you can set up and publish agent schedules and how your agents can manage their own schedule based on an example.
A manager for a large Customer Service operation is responsible for 12 teams. Each team has from 8 through 15 agents. At any given point, the manager needs visibility into the teams' schedule. The manager must also be able to create shifts, and approve or reject shift-swap or time-off requests from the team.
The manager can manage the teams' schedule using Scheduling. Team members can also manage their own schedules effectively by requesting shift-swaps or time off.
- Create shift plan.
- Create a schedule plan.
- Assign agents to work shifts.
- Publish the schedule.
- Approve teams' requests.
Agents make requests to change the schedule or take time off. For more information, refer to Track and manage your team schedule.
Get an overview of how to you can create shift plans and assign agents to the shifts using the schedule plan. For more information, refer to Create Shift Plans on YouTube.
Get an overview of how you can monitor shifts and schedule for your entire team from a single location. For more information, refer to Monitor Team Schedule on YouTube.
Get an overview of how agents use the workspace to manage their schedule. For more information, refer to Agent Schedule on YouTube.
For detailed information on creating and managing schedules using Workforce Optimization for Customer Service, refer to Scheduling in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service.