Free white paper · Part 4 · with spreadsheet
The Contact Centre Forecasting Masterclass
From the three building blocks to a defensible, accurate forecast — the complete craft, honestly explained.
Most of what separates an accurate forecast from a poor one is not the sophistication of the method — it is the discipline applied to the basics. This paper walks the whole craft in order: the three building blocks, getting the data right, choosing a method that fits, capturing every demand pattern, translating volume into a staffing requirement, and measuring accuracy honestly enough to improve. Written for the planner or analyst who does the forecasting.
Get the paper by email
Enter your email and we’ll send you the PDF — and add you to the fortnightly ccplanning newsletter. Unsubscribe any time.
Delivered via Buttondown. We’ll never share your address. By subscribing you join the ccplanning newsletter.
Thanks — your downloads are ready
Check your inbox for the newsletter confirmation too. The paper and the worked-methods spreadsheet are below.
Download the PDF (14 pages) Download the spreadsheet (Excel)What’s inside
- The three building blocks — volume, AHT, shrinkage — and why forecasting all three matters
- Getting the data right: granularity, channel separation, clean actuals, event flags
- The method ladder — from naive to machine learning, and how to pick the right rung
- The demand patterns you must capture: trend, seasonality, day-of-week, intraday, events
- Forecasting beyond voice: chat concurrency, email backlog, and new operations
- From volume to staffing through Erlang and shrinkage — the full chain
- Measuring accuracy honestly: WAPE, MAPE, and bias, by horizon, against a baseline
- The forecasting cadence, common mistakes, the AI-era place for ML, and a practical workflow
Includes free companion tools. A worked forecasting methods spreadsheet — sample data with four methods and an accuracy comparison, all live formulas — plus the volume forecaster, Erlang C, Erlang A, and shrinkage calculators that run the whole volume-to-staffing chain. No sign-up needed for the tools themselves.
Fourth in a series. See also AI and the Workforce Planner, The Business Case for Workforce Planning, and Building a Workforce Planning Function.