Configure unplanned shrinkage

Shrinkage occurs when you assign agents to a shift but for various reasons some scheduled agents are unavailable to take interactions. Shrinkage occurs due to many factors:

• Breaks

• Meals

• Unscheduled absences*

• Vacations

• Training

• Coaching

• Holidays

• Non-Adherence*

• Meetings

Note: Interaction Optimizer takes into account any activity assigned to the Daily Shift Constraint, so it is not necessary to account for these when calculating a shrinkage factor. Use only unscheduled non-adherence events when calculating shrinkage for Interaction Optimizer.

Use the Configure Unplanned Shrinkage dialog box to set shrinkage per interval for the entire week. The data may indicate more or less shrinkage at a given interval.  For example, you may set higher shrinkage values on Monday mornings than you would on Tuesday afternoons, because people may be more likely to call in sick or arrive late to work on Monday mornings.  

Example:

The following example outlines how, when you schedule more agents, the shrinkage indicates how many agents you expect to be available during each interval of the day:

Expected agents = (scheduled agents – (scheduled agents * shrinkage/100).  So, 200 scheduled agents and 10% shrinkage would be (200 – (200 * 10%) = 180 expected agents

Configure unplanned shrinkage

1. From the Scheduling Unit tab, click Configure Shrinkage.  The Configure Unplanned Shrinkage dialog box opens.

2. In the Default unplanned shrinkage field, type a default shrinkage value for Interaction Optimizer to use for all intervals across all the days and click Apply.

3. To quickly change a group of cells in the grid at the same time, click and drag your mouse to highlight specific times and/or dates cells and in the Set selected values to field, type the desired shrinkage value to assign to the selected cells. Next, click Apply. For example, you may want a shrinkage value of 15% from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. on Monday through Friday.  You can also use Ctrl+click to highlight non-consecutive times and/or dates.

4. To increase or decrease a shrinkage value for a selected group of cells by a certain percentage:

• Highlight the particular group of cells for which you want to change the shrinkage.

• In the Change selected values by field, type the percentage by which to increase or decrease shrinkage.

• Click Apply.

Note: The value you enter in this field increases or decreases the existing shrinkage value by the number you enter. It does not set the shrinkage to entered percentage, but  For example, assume you have a default value of 10% shrinkage for all intervals, but you want to increase all Monday intervals by 20%. If you select all the intervals on Monday, enter 20 in the Change selected values by field, and click Apply, all Monday intervals will increase to 12% instead of 10%.

5. To return the selected values to the default percentages, click the Set selected values to default button.

6. To return all values to the default settings, click the Set all to default button.