In Zendesk Workforce management (WFM), the forecast takes your historical data, based on workstreams you've specified, and creates inbound volume estimates for up to a year in the future. Zendesk WFM also includes Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) calculations showing how many staff members are required to handle the estimated workload.
The inbound volume forecast is based on the Prophet Forecasting Algorithm, and the FTE count forecast is based on a modified version of Erlang C. With the FTE calculations, you can enter your own shrinkage percentage and service level goals into the model. Finally, you can export the volume and FTE forecasts to comma-separated values (CSV) files.
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Accessing the Forecast page
To access forecasting
- Click the forecast icon on the top navigation bar of your Zendesk WFM web application.
Leveraging the forecast to help with scheduling
The forecast is a powerful way for you to visualize, analyze, and manage expected inbound volumes across workstreams for the future.
Alongside the features that allow you to granularly adjust what sort of tasks or work units that you can expect to come in over a certain period of time, you can make volume adjustments to account for any unique events that you expect will drive up the number of contacts you'll receive. For example, marketing campaigns or scheduled maintenance windows.
This is where the staffing targets and projections come in. Configure Occupancy, Average Handle Time, First Response Time, and Shrinkage for your scenario. The forecast then calculates how many agents you should expect to schedule to meet those targets.