Planning your staffing and operational requirements for messaging

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<p id="docs-hc-snippet" style="display: none;">Articles in the series</p>
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<p class="sidenav-heading">Articles in the series</p>
<ul class="nav nav-underline flex-column">
<li class="li"><a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5746900266906" target="_blank">Messaging deployment guide:
Introduction</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408846454682" target="_blank">Part 1: About conversational support with
messaging</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5746068733338" target="_blank">Part 2: Designing your conversational
messaging workflow</a></li>
<li class="li">Part 3: Planning your staffing and operational requirements</li>
<li class="li"><a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5746034323866" target="_blank">Part 4: Rolling out conversational messaging
support</a></li>
</ul>
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<p class="p">When it comes to workforce management, messaging works best with operational processes
and procedures that differ from those used with more traditional channels and support
structures. Whether you're coming to messaging from traditional phone- and email-based
support structures or a newer chatbot structure, you might need to shift the way you
think about staffing, workflows, and performance evaluations. </p>
<p class="p">In this article, you'll learn about the staffing and operational changes you should
consider for messaging.</p>
<div class="p">This article contains the following topics:<ul class="ul" id="topic_yz1_s3b_vzb__ul_y1k_djb_vzb">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_b2p_2jb_vzb">Staffing considerations</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_lhb_fjb_vzb">Operational considerations</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title2" class="topic nested1" id="topic_b2p_2jb_vzb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title2">Staffing considerations</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Finding the right balance between supporting customers, meeting service level
agreements, achieving high customer satisfaction scores, and managing your budget is
key to building an effective support staff. While <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5746068733338" target="_blank">designing your conversational messaging workflow</a>, you
should have considered the number of staff you'll need and how best to configure
messaging workflows to maximize effectiveness and efficiency. </p>
<p class="p">The <a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/service/messaging/instant-messaging-software/?_ga=2.155282619.1087880184.1702911120-2105806428.1699381783&amp;_gl=1*7su1o8*_ga*MjEwNTgwNjQyOC4xNjk5MzgxNzgz*_ga_0G6FC9CS2V*MTcwMzAxNjA1MS43LjEuMTcwMzAxNzQwOS42MC4wLjA." target="_blank">Zendesk website</a> has useful calculators to
help you estimate the number of agents you'll need when implementing messaging.</p>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title3" class="topic nested2" id="topic_rk4_wzg_vzb">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title3">Considering how messaging triage and routing affects staffing</h3>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">How you configure the flow of messaging conversations is a key part of a
successful conversational support strategy. It also has a big impact on your
staffing needs.</p>
<p class="p">We recommend keeping your ticket triage and routing process simple to maximize
agent time and improve the level of service provided. In addition to carefully
<a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5746068733338#topic_ent_4gj_tzb" target="_blank">choosing your routing method</a>, you can
also help agents manage their conversational messaging workloads successfully by
doing two things:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_rk4_wzg_vzb__ul_cb4_v1j_vzb">
<li class="li">Setting conversation limits or <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4776409839770" target="_blank">capacity rules</a>
</li>
<li class="li">Automatically closing inactive conversations</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title4" class="topic nested2" id="topic_cld_vjb_vzb">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title4">Setting agents up for success</h3>
<div class="body">
<div class="p">Proper staffing and preparation can help agents transition from traditional
support processes to the asynchronous conversational model provided by
messaging. There are a few specific things we recommend doing:<ol class="ol" id="topic_cld_vjb_vzb__ol_owb_2kb_vzb">
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Roll out messaging in phases.</strong><p class="p">First, consider taking a phased
approach to the development and deployment of your messaging
workflows. You can start with a live chat-like setup that your
agents might be more familiar with, then introduce more asynchronous
messaging functionality over time.</p>
</li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Train your agents ahead of time and follow up after the
rollout.</strong><p class="p">Training your agents is equally important as giving
agents time to adapt to different support systems and behaviors.
Before you roll out your first conversational messaging workflow,
notify your agents and tell them what to expect. Then, continue to
do so for each change you make to your conversational support model.
</p>
<p class="p">The following resources can help:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_cld_vjb_vzb__ul_r5q_4kb_vzb">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://academy.zendesk.com/on-demand-zendesk-messaging-for-agents?_ga=2.128044172.1087880184.1702911120-2105806428.1699381783&amp;_gl=1*up2zdn*_ga*MjEwNTgwNjQyOC4xNjk5MzgxNzgz*_ga_0G6FC9CS2V*MTcwMzAxNjA1MS43LjEuMTcwMzAxNzQwOS42MC4wLjA." target="_blank">Zendesk messaging training
course</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408843683226" target="_blank">Receiving and sending
messages in the Zendesk Agent Workspace</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408829025690" target="_blank">Using notification lists to
manage conversations</a></li>
<li class="li">Explain how work will be routed to them in the new workflow:<ul class="ul" id="topic_cld_vjb_vzb__ul_fz5_clb_vzb">
<li class="li">
<a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409149119514" target="_blank">Using omnichannel
routing</a> (push model)</li>
<li class="li">
<a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408822236058" target="_blank">Support
triggers</a> or <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5973077601562" target="_blank">Messaging
triggers</a>
</li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6009407849754" target="_blank">Auto-assigning
conversational support tickets</a></li>
<li class="li">Pulling messaging conversation tickets from views</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="li">Help them understand their role within the workflow if you're
using AI agents.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
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</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title5" class="topic nested1" id="topic_lhb_fjb_vzb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title5">Operational considerations</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Understanding your goals for conversational messaging support can help you configure
the optimal workflows and customer experience for your unique needs. </p>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title6" class="topic nested2" id="topic_jll_zch_vzb">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title6">Adjusting expectations</h3>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">After agents have been trained and messaging has been activated, it's important
to expect an adjustment period while you learn to compare messaging volume to
volumes you previously experienced from email, chat, or calls. </p>
<p class="p">You're likely to see request deflection rates changing for the better soon after
deploying conversational messaging support. With fewer customers needing live
support from an agent, a lot of statistics you used to evaluate agent success
and requirements will need to change. Give yourself ample time to observe these
changes, and then apply them to your volume and staffing forecasts. Be prepared
to work with the admins managing your AI agents and automations on an ongoing
basis to maintain this. See <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6330405002906" target="_blank">Measuring success when migrating from live
chat to messaging</a>.</p>
<p class="p">Additionally, it's normal to experience a temporary increase in request volume
while your customers and agents adjust to the new experience. Listen for trends
in your customer feedback that might indicate the need for additional agent
training or even increased staffing to prevent customer frustration and
increased wait times. Remember that messaging volume per channel should
ultimately be lower compared to chat due to the higher likelihood of self-solved
tickets and the exclusion of disconnected support requests from the queue.</p>
<p class="p">Finally, abandoned conversations are an invalid condition for messaging tickets.
Therefore, you should remove them from your forecast.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title7" class="topic nested1" id="topic_flc_k2h_vzb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title7">Changing your metrics and SLAs</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">After your agents settle into your new conversational messaging support process, you
can start focusing on updating your workload and productivity expectations,
optimizing your AI agents and automations, and performing root-cause analysis of
your tickets. All of these should lead to a long-term decrease in ticket volume and
increases in agent productivity.</p>
<p class="p">You'll likely need to reconfigure your workflow management tools connected to
Zendesk. This normally happens due to introducing new skills, groups, or metadata
that you want to use to build your forecasts.</p>
<p class="p">Note how the handling of tickets changes after you deploy messaging. Are there more
ticket touches or fewer? Are those ticket touches shorter and over a longer period
of time? Questions like these can help you plan your staffing and operations
requirements to fully realize your organization's potential.</p>
</div>
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