Equitable shift rotation and efficient assignment mechanisms for contact center agents

摘要

Systems and methods are provided for facilitating equitable assignment of rotating shifts to agents in a contact center. In one embodiment, points are allocated to agents indicating their frequency of receiving undesirable shift assignments. Based on the previously allocated points, future undesirable shifts are assigned to agents. The point allocation scheme accommodates various exceptions scheduling periodic rotating shifts, such as skipping assignment of an agent from an upcoming undesirable shift, agents leaving, swapping a shift, and agents being added. In another embodiments, agents are assigned to rotating shifts using constructs of a cycle and a rotation template, which facilitates assigning agents to a work schedule with a calendar in a repetitious manner, and where certain shifts are non-rotational in nature and other shifts are rotational in nature.

主权项

1. A method for scheduling agents on a recurring basis handling calls processed by a call handler in a contact center using a workforce management system comprising:
receiving a first input from a user at the workforce management system selecting a cycle from among a plurality of cycles, wherein the cycle comprises one or more shifts, wherein each shift is associated with a shift starting time, a shift ending time, and one or more shift breaks, wherein each shift break is associated with a shift break start and end time, and wherein each shift is associated with a day of a week; defining a roster template by the workforce management system, the roster template comprising one or more cycles, and wherein the roster template covers one or more days; receiving a second input from the user indicating an agent to be associated with a particular cycle; associating the agent to a particular cycle of the one or more cycles by the workforce management system, thereby creating a roster template instance stored in the workforce management system; receiving a third input from the user indicating one or more days of a calendar; associating, by the workforce management system, the roster template instance to a specified one or more days of the calendar in a scheduling period; and associating the roster template instance to another specified one or more days of the calendar during the scheduling period by the workforce management system, wherein the another specified one or more days does not overlap with the specified one or more days, thereby scheduling the agent by the workforce management system to handle calls processed by the call handler on the specified one or more days and the another specified one or more days.