Verified AI summary ◀▼
Set business hours for Workforce Management forecasts to predict future contact volumes and staffing needs accurately. By defining specific hours for each workstream, you ensure the system calculates staffing requirements within your availability window. This helps optimize resources and meet service goals by aligning agent schedules with expected demand. Adjust business hours easily within the forecasting tool to tailor forecasts to your operational needs.
Forecasting in Zendesk Workforce Management (WFM) predicts future contact volumes and staffing needs by analyzing historical data and applying advanced algorithms. This process ensures you schedule the right number of agents at the right times, helping you optimize resources and consistently meet service goals.
When configuring staffing parameters, you can set specific business hours for a workstream that the system uses to build your staffing forecast.
When set, the email channel sums up volume outside the availability hours and treats it as if it arrived at the first second of the availability hours, with its SLA starting at that point.
For chat and voice channels, volume outside of business hours isn’t counted. This means volume outside the availability hours won’t be considered when calculating staffing requirements within the availability window.
To specify business hours for a forecast
- In Workforce management, click
Forecasting in the navigation bar, then select Forecast scenarios. - (Optional) Choose the Day view.
You can apply business hours in any view, but we recommend using the Day view because the Week and Month views might not clearly show the impact of applying business hours.
- Select the scenario for which you want to set business hours.
- Under Staffing Parameters, click the Availability toggle to define the business hours your agents need to work for this workstream. By default, these hours usually match the operational hours set for your locations.
- Select your business hours and click Save.
The forecast recalculates based on the newly configured business hours.