Planning agent staffing for Zendesk Suite

What's my plan?

All Suites | Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus

When first launching your Zendesk, it’s important to take into account your different staffing requirements across all products. This article will discuss some practices you can implement to help plan staffing for Zendesk Suite.
This article contains the following sections:

Deciding on a staffing model

Planning your staffing schedule

Using reports to evaluate staffing

Related articles:

Planning agent staffing for messaging

Determining your staffing requirements for voice support

Deciding on a staffing model

When initially scheduling your agents, you should consider the type of staffing model you would like to implement. There are two methodologies for staffing across multiple channels:

Dedicated staffing model

Shared staffing model

Dedicated staffing model

In general if your organization has more than 10 agents, it is recommended to use the dedicated model. In this format, agents focus their attention on customers from one channel. For example, voice support agents would offer phone support during the duration of their shift. This model enables agents to develop a solid understanding of one channel and find the most effective methods of helping customers. Further, a dedicated model enables your team to scale more effectively.

The downside of this model is that agents often don’t get a deeper understanding of a customer’s problems as they end up escalating complex queries.

Shared staffing model

In a shared model, agents are expected to work on channels that require the most attention and then switch over to other channels as they become busier. For example, a shared agent might start their day working on email support, but then switch over to answering phone calls as more start coming in. The advantage of this model is that agents maximize their time and are always solving customer queries. However, an agent would have to be trained more thoroughly to be able to effectively switch between multiple channels with little notice.

Planning your staffing schedule

This section will provide you with an overview structure and some general tips for creating your schedule.

Using a blocked schedule model

Making staffing adjustments

Using a blocked schedule model

When planning scheduling and staffing across multiple channels, one option we recommend is a blocked schedule . A blocked schedule strategy acts similar to a dedicated staffing model, in which agents are assigned one channel per time slot. The agent will monitor the associated channel for their shift before switching to another channel.

The following are a few recommendations to consider when creating and staffing a blocked schedule strategy:

Distribute your channel shifts evenly. If agents are placed on the same channel throughout the entire day, they might experience channel overload.

Schedule your Support channel shifts after your live channels. In general, it is a good practice to schedule your agents Support shift after their live channel shifts, so they have the opportunity to follow-up quickly on any open tickets created from those shifts.

Prepare for transitions. Transitions between timezones and agent shifts can be one of the most frequent opportunities for support request to be missed.

Consider all of your channels. While this article primarily discusses your primary product channels, it is important to evaluate all of the areas customers might request your support. For example, it is a good idea to have an agent monitor your social media throughout the day.

Track your metrics. To accurately evaluate your staffing and scheduling methods, you will need to track your request volume. See Using reports to evaluate staffing for examples of the reports you could use.

The most important recommendation is to communicate with your agents both throughout the day and after their shifts are complete. While we recommend breaking up channel blocks to prevent channel overload, sometimes agents might be focused on their channel and require more time to finish up their current tasks before switching. At the end of the day, you will want to gather feedback from your agents to evaluate how you can make adjustments on staffing and scheduling.

Making staffing adjustments

The most critical aspect of staffing is making adjustments according to your agents feedback. You should continue to communicate with your agents to evaluate how their experiences with each channel and adjust the number of agents for each shift accordingly. Your agents’ feedback and your support request volume metrics will be critical factors in determining your staffing.

While you are still collecting agent feedback, it might be good to implement an override agent. An override agent is an agent currently scheduled for the Support channel, but their primary responsibility is to transfer into another channel when extra assistance is needed. This could be when your call wait time becomes too high, your messaging requests increase unusually, or an agent cannot transition to their following channel. An override agent can provide back-up assistance whenever necessary.

You can read more about the adjustments you might need to make for each product in Planning agent staffing for messaging and Determining your staffing requirements for voice support.

Using reports to evaluate staffing

After launching your staffing, it’s important to monitor your request volumes and adjust your volumes accordingly.

The following reports can help you:

To analyze your overall ticket volume, see Analyzing your Support ticket activity and agent performance.

To analyze your call volume, see Analyzing call activity with the Talk dashboard and Analyzing call activity with the Talk Team dashboard.