(For additional information, view the Forecasting Analysis webinar presented July 20, 2023)
How to select historical data for use in forecasting future contact volumes.
Analyzing your history should help you determine which weeks in history to use, and which weeks to exclude to help you create a more accurate forecast.
To access the historical reports, navigate to the Report tab, hover over Contact volume, then click Enterprise model.
The default report represents the entire enterprise model for this week.
The Executive Summary includes contacts offered, contacts not handled, contacts handled, and the average handle time.
The table below shows the days included in the report.
To analyze history, determine how many weeks to look back, based on the forecast profile you will use.
In our example we will use a ‘six weeks’ profile and will look at eight weeks of data so we can identify trends in the call volume and average handle time.
Click Show options, then select the activity for the forecast.
Select a date range for eight weeks. We will use full weeks for our analysis.
When finished, click Apply options.
Again, the executive summary at the top shows the total numbers, and the table below shows the daily contacts offered, contacts not handled (or abandoned), contacts handled, and average handle time for the date range selected.
The percent of total number is the percentage of contacts offered on that day against the total contacts offered in the executive summary.
This is the same for the average handle time percentage.
Click on the hamburger menu in the top right to print the table or export the data to a CSV or Excel file.
To see a graphic representation of contact volume or AHT, click on Date, Week, or Month.
With the display by month, you may also view average contact volume and average AHT.
Looking at the graphs by date, the chart can help you see the arrival patterns of your call volume and AHT. In this example, the values are consistent until Thanksgiving.
When planning a six week forecast, we might want to omit the week of Thanksgiving because that Thursday would have no data.
You can look at details in the chart by clicking on a data point.
You can remove specific types of data from the chart by clicking on the name below the chart. Click on the name again to add it back to the chart.
To zoom in on a section of the chart, click and drag over the chart. This can make it easier to see exactly what happened the week of Thanksgiving.
After viewing the contact volume, click the tab at the top to look at average handle time.
When finished, click Reset zoom.
Use Show options to change the chart type. You can view interval charts, day charts, and miscellaneous charts, which shows the groups of your enterprise model for the selected activity.