A scheduling engine is multi-modal when it handles more than one mode of work at once. That covers the work itself (live channels such as voice and chat, deferred work such as email, and back office tasks) and the way people are scheduled, from fixed patterns to shift bidding. QStory does both in one engine.
QStory forecasts demand for every channel you support and builds schedules and shift patterns across all of them: voice and chat, email and other deferred work, back office work items, and branch and field teams. One plan balances them against each other. See forecasting and scheduling.
Yes. QStory’s Work Item Manager acts as a back office ACD. Work items arrive by file upload or from systems such as Zendesk or Salesforce, and the most urgent are matched to the people best skilled to handle them. Cross-skilled agents can then move between live channels and back office tasks when the phones are quiet. See back office workforce management and integrating frontline and back office teams.
Yes. One engine supports rotations, shift generation, shift bidding and preference-based scheduling at the same time, in the same business unit. One team can stay on fixed patterns while another bids for shifts. This is also written as multi-model scheduling: our article covers each approach and its trade-offs.
QStory is built on real-time intraday management, so the engine that writes the schedule also keeps it current. It reforecasts the day continuously, protects the queues when a shortfall appears and moves training and one-to-ones into quiet periods. Agents can swap shifts and breaks through the Agent App, within the rules your planners set.
When each channel is planned on its own, every team carries its own slack and nobody can see across them. With one engine, planners work from the same forecast and the same schedule, and spare capacity in one area is visible to the rest. QStory is a complete workforce management platform, so the forecast flows straight through into schedules and real-time decisions.
Most large workforce management suites, including NICE, Verint, Calabrio and Genesys, schedule across several channels. The questions to ask are whether voice, chat, email and back office work are planned in one engine or in separate modules, and whether the schedule keeps adjusting once the day is under way. QStory plans all of them in one engine, built on real-time intraday management.
Yes. QStory forecasts each channel you support and builds one schedule across all of them, so voice, chat and email are staffed from the same plan.
Yes. The Work Item Manager routes and prioritises back office work like a contact centre ACD, and the same scheduling engine covers back office, branch and field teams.
The two terms overlap. Multi-modal usually describes the mix of channels and types of work in one schedule. Multi-model describes the mix of scheduling methods, such as rotations, shift bidding and preference-based scheduling. QStory supports both in one engine.
Yes. Agents can see their schedules in real time and swap shifts and breaks through the Agent App, within the rules your planners set.
No. QStory is a complete, standalone workforce management platform. Forecasting, scheduling, schedule optimisation and real-time management for every channel run in one system.
QStory integrates with leading cloud contact centre solutions, ACDs, chat tools, CRM systems such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, HR and payroll systems, and learning management systems.
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