In short
What this page covers
- Staff the curve, not the day
- Shift templates you set once
- Holiday you approve with the rota in front of you
- Open shifts when you are short
For call centres
Rota software for call centres, built around the call curve
Staff the Monday morning wall, cover a lunch dip on purpose, and stop finding out on payday what the evening team actually worked. Free, for as many agents and sites as you have.
Where the time goes
What actually goes wrong on a call centre rota
These are the everyday situations that turn a rota into a source of mistakes, phone calls and needless cost.
01
The Monday morning wall
Calls do not arrive evenly and they never have. Monday at 09:15 the queue is forty deep, and by 15:30 you are paying agents to watch a dead board. Staff the day flat and you buy both problems at once.
02
Two agents short and the numbers fall off a cliff
Being two down does not make you slightly worse, it makes you unrecognisable. Answer time doubles, abandons climb, and the agents still on the phone take the mood of every caller who waited nine minutes.
03
Four people booked the same Monday off
Each request was reasonable on the day you approved it, weeks apart, in an inbox. Together they are the busiest morning of the week with half a team, and nobody saw it coming because nothing ever showed you the four side by side.
04
Rostered is not the same as on the phone
Thirty agents on the rota is not thirty agents on the queue. Breaks, briefings, coaching, wrap and training sit in between, and if the rota only knows the first number then the queue is the thing that discovers the second.
05
Agents spread across campaigns
Half your floor is trained on one queue, a third on another, a handful on both. The rota says twelve agents are in, but it does not say whether the right ones are in, so you find out when the wrong queue is ringing out.
06
Evening part-timers in a group chat
Your 17:00 to 21:00 team are students, and they swap constantly. It happens in replies nobody scrolled back to read, so on Tuesday two of them think they have the same shift covered and neither of them turns up.
How InShift fixes it
A rota that follows the shape of your day instead of flattening it. Everything below is in the free account, with no cap on agents or sites.
Solution 1
Staff the curve, not the day
Stagger the starts. Put eight agents on at 08:30 and six more at 09:00 because that is when the wall lands, and overlap lunch deliberately so the dip is a decision instead of an accident. You see the headcount hour by hour before you publish.
Solution 2
Shift templates you set once
An early, a mid, a late, a 17:00 to 21:00 evening. Set the hours once, say how many agents each one needs and which queues they cover, then drop them onto the week. A month of rota takes minutes, even with three start times a day.
Solution 3
Holiday you approve with the rota in front of you
When a request comes in you see who else is already off that day, on that queue. Approving the fourth Monday becomes a choice you make with your eyes open, which is usually the same as not making it.
Solution 4
Open shifts when you are short
Two agents off sick and the queue building. Post the shift and everyone who could work it gets it on their phone at once. The first one free takes it, you approve with one tap, and the morning is saved before the abandons start.
Solution 5
Campaigns and queues as roles
Set up the campaigns you actually run, mark who works which, and put them on the rota. Then the screen tells you not just that twelve agents are in but that four of them are on the queue you were worried about.
Solution 6
Hours ready for payroll
Hours add up as the rota is worked, at each agent's own hourly rate, across full timers and evening part timers alike. Export the lot to Excel for whoever runs payroll. No retyping, no month-end surprise.
A day on the rota at a call centre
A contact centre open 08:00 to 21:00, with the wall from nine and a second run of calls after six. Note the staggered starts and the fact that the lunch overlap is planned rather than hoped for.
| Time | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 08:00-16:00 | Team leader | Opens the floor, briefs at 08:45, takes calls when it spikes |
| 08:30-16:30 | Agent | Early start against the Monday backlog |
| 09:00-17:00 | Agent | Second start: the wall lands at nine, not at eight |
| 11:00-19:00 | Agent | Bridges the lunch dip, then carries the afternoon |
| 12:00-20:00 | Floor walker | Coaching and escalations, on the phones when it backs up |
| 17:00-21:00 | Agent, evening | Part time: the four hours of the second peak |
Try it without an account
Three free tools that need no sign-up and no email. Build a rota or add up hours right now, and move to an account when the team has to see it.
Frequently asked questions
How many agents do I need to hold my answer time?▾
Start from the calls, not the people. If Monday brings 400 calls between nine and one, that is 100 an hour, and an agent who handles six an hour means seventeen on the phone at once. Then add what sits between rostered and on the phone: breaks, briefings, wrap and coaching. At around a third, seventeen on the queue means roughly twenty five on the rota. InShift does not forecast your calls, and you should be suspicious of anything that says it does from a standing start. It is where your answer becomes a rota you can actually staff.
Can I run several campaigns or queues on one account?▾
Yes, and there is no limit on how many. Run each campaign as its own location, or as roles on one floor, whichever matches how you actually work. An agent who covers two queues has one rota with both on it, and a campaign manager sees only theirs.
How do agents see the rota?▾
They install the InShift app on their phone and enter a six digit code you give them. That is the whole setup, no email address and no password to forget. When you change the rota they get a push notification, so nobody works from a screenshot of last week.
Two agents have called in sick and the queue is building. What do I do?▾
Publish the shifts as open shifts. Everyone who could work them gets a notification at the same time, and the first ones to take them have them. You approve with one tap. On a morning when every minute is a worse answer time, that is the difference between one action and twenty phone calls.
Does it work out hours and pay?▾
It adds up the hours as the rota is worked, multiplies them by each agent's hourly rate, and exports the timesheet to Excel for any period you choose. Rates sit on the person, so an agent who covers two queues is counted once, at their own. The hours were always the part that took an evening, and that is the part it takes off you.
Is it actually free, or free until it is not?▾
Free. All the features, as many agents and sites as you like, no card and no trial clock ticking. We are not going to pretend otherwise on a page whose whole point is that you can trust the rota.