Introducing workstreams - because we all need a good way to segment work!

Workstreams are Tymeshift's main building block. In this post, Lilith will show you how to set them up and make the most out of them.

Welcome to Workstreams, one of the main building blocks of Tymeshift and something that should be on your mind whether you’re just starting your Tymeshift journey, or are a certified pro. (We don’t have a certification yet... but you get the idea 😜)

We use workstreams to segment work in Tymeshift, and they allow us to get more granular on the types of work rather than the old school mentality of channels = ticket, chat, and voice. For some teams, it works well to break the channels into these main three and call it a day, however other teams require more specificity.

For example, think back to your views in Zendesk. Likely you define the views based on types of work rather than channels alone. Maybe that’s breaking it down into a tiered approach with newer agents working the easiest tickets in Tier 1 and more advanced agents working the more difficult tickets in Tiers 2 and 3. Maybe you are using messaging, WhatsApp or social media for support so the main three channels will not cut it. With workstreams in Tymeshift you can now define each of these segments of work specifically!

When you go to create workstreams you’ll always start with channel-level segmentation. To add further refinement you'll have the option to use and/or conditioning to include or exclude groups, tags, brands, and forms. This will allow you to continue narrowing down the work type in question to the appropriate workstream.

Let's see it in action:

Workstreams in action!

Where do we use workstreams in Tymeshift you ask?
(TL;DR Just about everywhere...)

  • Accurately forecast inbound volume by specific segmentation
  • Easily break down reports by the types of work our teams are doing
  • Monitor our agent's activity and schedule adherence in real-time
  • Predict staffing needs per line of business
  • Assign segments of tickets to agents that are trained to handle that type of work. Then easily generate a schedule based on that anticipated inbound volume!

Here are Tymeshift’s three golden rules of workstreams:

  1. You must capture ALL of your Zendesk tickets (including chat & voice tickets). If you do not, you risk being understaffed.
  2. Your Workstreams CANNOT overlap each other. If so, you may have tickets counting more than once and you risk being overstaffed.
  3. You MUST segment at a minimum by a channel from a forecasting standpoint since each channel has different AHT & SLAs.

About Tymeshift:

We’re Tymeshift, an effortless WFM solution made exclusively for Zendesk to make workforce managers’ lives easier. Our workforce management tools include shift scheduling, forecasting and analytics. A perfectly intuitive Zendesk integration makes your CX agents’ lives easier. Learn all there is about us and our product on tymeshift.com