Skills CX operations
Forecasting volume and staffing to it
Two separate problems that get conflated, which is why staffing plans miss: Forecasting, Staffing.
npx rulebase-skills install cx-volume-forecastingWhen to use it
Reach for this when someone says any of these — they are the phrases the skill itself triggers on:
- “how many agents do we need”
- “forecast our ticket volume”
- “Erlang C”
How it works
The method, in the order the skill runs it. The full procedure — tables, worked examples and the edge cases — is in the skill itself.
Part 1: forecasting
Support volume is a function of business volume. Forecasting raw contacts means re-learning your company's growth curve every quarter and being wrong at every inflection.
Part 2: staffing
Arguments
The assumptions, and when they break
Erlang C is the industry standard and it is wrong in specific, knowable ways. The script reports these on every run rather than presenting a clean number.
Channel-specific guidance
Voice — Erlang C works, with the caveats above. If you have abandonment data, Erlang A is a better fit and will usually tell you that you need fewer agents.
Troubleshooting
We staff to plan and still miss service level — check, in order: shrinkage understated, AHT excluding after-contact work, skills-based routing fragmenting the pool, and intraday peaks inside the scheduling interval.
Related skills
Free and open source, and vendor-neutral — it reads the conversations from whichever helpdesk you already run. Browse all 149 skills · connect your helpdesk over MCP · source on GitHub
