You can modify your Zendesk Workforce management (WFM) forecasts by increasing or decreasing inbound ticket volumes. Additionally, you can change your team's staffing parameters to see how it affects the full-time equivalent (FTE) count.
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Adjusting volumes
Forecast gives you the ability to adjust your expected volumes based on unique upcoming events, such as marketing campaigns and feature removals.
To adjust your inbound volume
- In Zendesk Workforce management, click the Forecast icon
(
) in the top bar. - Select a workstream.
- In the Volume adjustments panel, click the plus icon (+) to add an adjustment.
Here, you can:
- Rename your adjustment to give it more context. For example, you can name it Marketing, New feature release, etc.
- Select the date range to apply your volume changes.
- Enter your expected inbound ticket volume under Change and select if this value is a percentage (%) or exact value (#).
- You can continue creating additional volume adjustments by clicking the plus icon
(+).
- When you're done, click Save. Your Inbound volume chart and Required
staffing count is updated.Note: After saving one or more volume adjustments, you can use the checkboxes to select or deselect them.
Understanding inbound volume adjustment distribution
The distribution of your inbound ticket volume adjustment is calculated rounding to one decimal place (for example, 10.1 instead of 10.123). Values are distributed in 15-minute intervals proportionally to what was calculated by the forecast. Any remainders are then distributed randomly, also following the patterns of the forecast.
The following examples illustrate different scenarios for this calculation.
Volume adjustment by number of tickets
Selecting changes by number of tickets for a specific time period distributes them according to the forecasted trend for the period, rounded to the first decimal.
For example, you expect 10 additional tickets on a future day. For the sake of simplicity, assume the forecast for this day was equal to all intervals, so tickets are equally distributed throughout the day.
The distribution of inbound volume adjustments is calculated as follows:
- Each day consists of 96 15-minute intervals.
- Dividing the +10 tickets by 96 equals 0.10416667. That’s then rounded to the first decimal, 0.1, and added to each 15 min interval.
- The remaining 0.4 tickets (96 * 0.1 = 9.6 tickets, so 0.4 remain out of the total of 10) are distributed randomly, following the forecast pattern.
Volume adjustment by percentage
When you create an inbound volume that’s adjusted by percentage, the algorithm takes the absolute value of tickets for the selected period and applies the percentage to it. This results in +/- X number of tickets which is then distributed as described above.
For example, take the period of one day and set an increase of 100% for that specific day. The expected value was 20 tickets; with the 100% increase, it’s expected to double. The distribution process then occurs as described above.
Excluding historical inbound volume outliers
You can remove dates and times that may skew your forecast. Excluding outliers helps to make your forecast more precise. This can be useful for events such as a one-time marketing campaign or an outage that could have caused a sudden increase in your inbound volume.
After you've saved the excluded outliers, it takes some time to recalculate. Once completed, you can see how the forecast looks without the impact of historical spikes.
To exclude historical inbound volume outliers
- Select a workstream from the Forecast page.
- In the Excluded Outliers panel, click the plus icon (+) to add an outlier.
- Click in the name field or select the options menu icon (
), then select Rename.It's recommended to accurately rename the outlier. For example, you can name it Outage.
- Choose a start and end time and date as well as the time you want to exclude.
- Click Save.
), then select Delete. If you want to delete all
of the outliers created, click the button at the bottom of the column. Editing staffing parameters
The forecast allows you to modify the FTE count parameters according to your set business requirements because not every workstream can have the exact First Response Time (FRT), Average Handle Time (AHT) and shrinkage expectations. Learn more about workforce management metrics.
You can also set specific business hours and a channel preference for a workstream. The channel preference controls staffing parameters that will be used to build your staffing forecast.
To modify your FTE count parameters
- Select a workstream from the Forecast page.
- In the Excluded Outliers panel, click the arrow to expand the panel. From here you
can:
- Select the Channel preference for the workstream.
- Adjust the Occupancy Rate for the workstream.
- Change the AHT and select values for hh:mm:ss.
- Specify the Target of the FRT and select the values for hh:mm:ss.
- State the SLA attainment Target.
- Enter a Shrinkage value.
- Add the minimum staffing number you need for that workstream.
- Choose whether or not you want to specify your availability or business hours.
- You can also reset to the default values.
- When you're done, click Save.