Accuracy for our forecast is paramount when we are planning our schedules and staffing needs, which is why outliers in past volume data can be a serious pain. If your business changes, causing a massive shift in volume, your forecast will likely be skewed depending on the previous data being considered. This is why you can now define which data Tymeshift uses when generating the forecast. Problem = solved.
You now have the flexibility to tell your forecast to ignore data before a specific date that you define by workstream. This means a more accurate forecast for you, better coverage for your customers, and more favorable schedules for your agents.
Why we ❤️ this, and why you will as well:
Three reasons:
- Accuracy
- Accuracy
- Accuracy
Only partially joking with that, there are other reasons, like the fact that this can be done by workstream independently, but every reason you can think of boils down to the same fundamental result - a more accurate forecast for each activity your agents do.
Say in the first year, your teams had a very low volume because you were not on your customer's radar, however, this year, you had a business change that increased your volume immensely - maybe you launched a new viral product or got a jump start from a successful campaign.
We would not want to include the first year in your forecast because the transition from the first to the second year is not an accurate representation of how your volume will grow in the future. If we were using data from years one and two, your forecast would increase the volume drastically for year three rather than reflecting a forecast that leveled out in year two after the business change. Not only is this not ideal, but it's usually a massive headache for the workforce team. Well, here's Tymeshift, not here to pass you the aspirin and a cup of coffee (shoutout to the migraine folks out there - if you know, you know), we're here to remove the issue before it occurs with a simple solution to eliminate the irrelevant outliers. In this case, we'd eliminate year one and use the data only after the growth.
Two things to keep in mind:
- You won't be able to set this date back further than two years because Tymeshift is only looking at the past two years of data anyway,
- You also won't be able to set a date closer than one month from when you are adjusting the data. Tymeshift requires at least one month's worth of data for our algorithm to generate a forecast for you.
Give it a try:
- Head into the forecast feature
- Click the three dots next to the workstream you want to adjust
- Select the Historical volume option
- Click Select Zendesk historical data
- Here, we default to "Use all available data" so click to toggle that off
- Select the specific date you would like and Tymeshift will ignore the data before that date
- Remember: any unavailable date will be greyed out due to Tymeshift's minimum of 1 month and maximum of 2 years' worth of data rules.
- Click apply and generate the forecast to begin the forecast generation
- Soon, you'll have a forecast that more accurately reflects your needs based on the restriction you determined were more reliable. Boom - Automagically headache free!
Check out our help center article here for more details on getting your forecast set up.
