About schedule types

When scheduling agents, you have the option of using single service queues, virtual service queues, and multiskill groups. Each has attributes that make it suitable for different situations.

• Single service queues are suitable in contact centers where single-skilled agents support a service queue. For example, there could be an English voice service queue and a Spanish voice service queue. The agents assigned to the English voice service queue handle calls from English-speaking customers all day, every day.
• Virtual service queues are suitable when you wish to combine similar service queues of the same contact type (interactive or non-interactive). For example, you can combine several low-volume voice service queues into one virtual service queue. This aggregates enough volume so that accurate forecasting and scheduling can occur. Statistics for the individual low-volume service queues will not be available through WFM (but would be obtainable from the ACD). Note that this unavailability might not be of importance in your contact center.
• Multiskill groups are suitable when you want to aggregate multiple service queues and multiple contact types and to schedule agents proportionally to support them. For example, a multiskill group might include service queues for English voice contacts and email contacts for Product A as well as Spanish voice contacts and email contacts for Product A. Because the multiskill group is set up to allocate specific percentages of an agent’s time to each specific service queue, coverage forecasts and schedules will be more accurate for each service queue. The agent statistics are also allocated by percentage to each service queue and so are more accurate.

Both types of scheduling methods (Balanced and Prioritized) can use block scheduling (formerly known as multiskill agent queuing, or MSAQ). In block scheduling, an agent performs multiple activities, each activity during a specified block of time. In contrast, in non-block scheduling, an agent performs one activity only for the entire schedule.

An agent’s schedule can include a combination of single service queues, virtual service queues, and multiskill groups. For example, an agent might support a single service queue from 8:00 to 11:00 AM and a virtual service queue from 1:00 to 4:00 PM.

The needs of your contact center will guide you in choosing what scheduling option you use. You might find that a virtual service queue serves your purpose best or that you want to allocate agents to multiple contact types and multiple service queues during the same block of time and so opt to use multiskill groups.

IMPORTANT   The weights allocated to the service queues that make up a multiskill group should be as accurate as possible. If they are not accurate, the coverage for specific service queues will be too high or too low in the generated schedule.