Intraday automation is software that keeps a contact centre’s plan matched to reality as the day unfolds. It watches demand and staffing in real time, spots where the day is drifting from the forecast, and makes the routine corrections automatically: reforecasting the day, rescheduling offline work, and moving people to where customers need them.
A common misconception is that intraday automation is a separate tool you bolt onto workforce management. At QStory it is the other way round. Intraday automation is the foundation, and a full workforce management platform is built around it: forecasting, multi-modal scheduling, real-time management, back office and agent engagement in one cloud-native system.
What does intraday automation actually do?
Throughout the day, QStory’s decision engine:
- reforecasts continuously using live demand and staffing data
- finds surplus and shortfall as they appear, before they hurt service levels
- moves offline activities such as training, coaching and one-to-ones into quiet periods
- protects the phones when demand spikes and reschedules everything else
- nudges teammates back on plan and automates requests such as swaps and breaks where that helps your business
Every action follows rules your planners set and can see, so you always know why a change was made.
How is intraday automation different from intraday management?
Intraday management is the discipline: running the day against the plan. Intraday automation is software doing the routine parts of that job for you, so decisions land in seconds rather than after the damage is done. Real-time analysts stop working as administrators and get to work as analysts: reading the day, handling exceptions and improving the plan.
What difference does it make?
Customers have recorded a 14.5% increase in adherence in their first year with QStory. NatWest repurposes 400,000 hours a year for coaching and development. Nationwide records 1,000 fewer hours of lateness a month. Jet2 increased coaching time by 87%.
Behind the numbers sits the original point of intraday automation: less idle time and less boredom, service levels protected, and quiet periods put to work for training, back-office tasks or time back for the people answering the calls.
Intraday automation makes contact centres flexible, productive and attractive places to work. Happy employees = happy customers.
See it in action on our real-time adherence and intraday automation page, or book a demo.