For call centres

Call centre rota software: agents on the call curve, from the early line to the night line

Calls do not arrive in a flat line, so a rota of eight-hour shifts that all start at nine leaves the ten o’clock queue waiting and the six o’clock floor half empty. InShift lets you draw the lines as shift types with staggered starts, put a peak line on top of the busy hours on the days it is needed, pay the night hours by rule, and give thirty agents a rota in their pocket with their hours already counted before payday.

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The calls draw a curve, and a rota of nine-to-five shifts draws a flat line

An inbound floor with thirty-two agents on the books takes its first calls at six, climbs to a peak between eleven and two, falls through the afternoon and keeps a night line of two for the customers who ring at three in the morning. Nobody plans that with a single shift. The rota is six lines with staggered starts, a peak line that exists on weekdays only, and a weekend built from fewer people on the same lines, with each agent working one weekend in three.

The failures are the usual ones. Team leaders plan their own teams in their own spreadsheets, so the floor finds out on Monday that the early line has six people and the late line has two. An agent swaps a Saturday with a colleague by text, and payroll pays the wrong person. The night premium is worked out by hand from a printout rather than from the hours that were planned, and every payday brings a queue at the team leader’s desk with questions about hours and nights.

Below is how a floor of thirty-two looks in InShift: the lines as shift types, a weekday of the call curve as a table, the night premium as a rule, the app through an agent’s eyes before the rota goes out, and each agent’s own hours in their pocket a week before payday.

Lines

Six lines as shift types, and the “List” view shows who is on each line every day

Each line is a shift type of the site: “Early 06:00–14:00”, “Day 08:00–16:00”, “Mid 12:00–20:00”, “Late 14:00–22:00”, “Night 22:00–06:00”, and “Peak 10:00–14:00”, which is switched on for Monday to Friday only and is offered by the planner on those days alone. The “List” view puts the dates in rows and the lines in columns, with the agents on each line in the cell and an empty slot where a line is still short, so a team leader reads the whole week line by line before it is published.

  • A line is a shift type with its start, its end and the days of the week it runs on
  • “List” view: dates in rows, lines in columns, the people on each line in the cell
  • Rows grouped by department in the “Week” view, so each team leader finds their own team
  • “Copy last week” carries the whole pattern into next week as drafts, then “Publish”
The admin panel screen by screen

A weekday on the floor: agents on the line, hour by hour

Thirty-two agents on the books, twenty-one on a weekday. One letter per line, the way the planner colours them.

HoursCallsAgentsLines
06–08Low3E
08–10Rising7E D
10–12High12E D P
12–14Peak16E D P M
14–16High11D M L
16–20Falling7M L
20–22Low3L
22–06Night2N

E is “Early 06:00–14:00” with three agents, D “Day 08:00–16:00” with four, P “Peak 10:00–14:00” with five, a line that exists Monday to Friday only, M “Mid 12:00–20:00” with four, L “Late 14:00–22:00” with three, N “Night 22:00–06:00” with two. The other eleven agents are on their days off, on the weekend rota or on leave. Saturday runs the same lines without the peak and with one agent fewer on each; the night line is two people every night of the year.

Nights and weekends

The night line pays its premium by rule, and the hours land in payroll already counted

On the “Premiums” tab of “Payroll”, “Night hours” is a rule with a window, for example 22:00 to 06:00, and a percentage: every hour inside the window on a published shift is paid with the premium, for the whole company or for the agents of one position. “Holiday work” pays the days from your own calendar at a multiplier, and “Over the daily norm” pays the hours past the norm. A rule is effective from a date and never rewrites the months already counted. In “Accruals”, each agent’s row shows shifts, scheduled hours, night hours, premiums, accrued, paid and owed.

  • “Night hours”: a window and a percentage, applied to every hour inside the window
  • “Holiday work” from a calendar of paid holidays, “Over the daily norm” at a multiplier
  • A rule for the “Whole company”, a “Location”, a “Job position” or a “Person”, effective from a date
  • “Accruals”: shifts, scheduled hours, night hours, premiums, accrued, paid and owed per agent

Before it goes out

The app through any agent’s eyes, and who has not joined it yet

“Employee’s view” lists the whole floor with a status next to each name, “Connected” or “Not joined yet”, and shows the chosen person’s app on a phone beside the list: their week, their requests, their chat, exactly as they see it. A new starter who has not joined gets an “Invite” with their personal code from the same row. The row also holds the person’s “Role”, “Locations” and “Job positions” with a “Change” button, so a team leader checks what an agent can see and do before the rota goes out.

  • “Connected” or “Not joined yet” next to every name; “Invite” with the code for those who have not
  • The chosen person’s app on a phone beside the list, as they see it
  • “Role”, “Locations” and “Job positions” of the person, with a “Change” button
  • “Invite team” prints a code and a QR for everyone who has not joined, ready for the induction day

The agent’s phone

Every agent sees their own shifts, hours and nights a week before payday

“Stats” in the InShift app shows the agent their period: shifts, hours, “Scheduled pay” and “Earned to date”, then “By day” with the hours and the pay of every shift, and “What the total is made of”: “Pay for shifts” plus each premium on its own line, the night hours included. The questions that used to queue at the team leader’s desk on payday are answered in the app a week earlier. The same app holds the rota with “Who else is working”, a swap with a colleague that goes to the team leader for approval, and a “Day off” request with the balance.

  • “Stats”: shifts, hours, “Scheduled pay”, “Earned to date”, “By day”
  • “What the total is made of”: “Pay for shifts” and every premium on its own line
  • A swap with a colleague or a “Day off” request from the phone, approved by the team leader
  • Push before the shift and on every change; “Announcements” with a “Read by” count
The app screen by screen

Moving a call centre onto InShift

An afternoon for a floor of thirty-two, the invitations included.

  1. 1

    Sign up and the site

    Email or Google. The site is a location; the teams are departments, with positions such as agent, senior agent and team leader inside them.

  2. 2

    The lines as shift types

    “Early 06:00–14:00”, “Day 08:00–16:00”, “Mid 12:00–20:00”, “Late 14:00–22:00”, “Night 22:00–06:00”, and “Peak 10:00–14:00” switched on for Monday to Friday only.

  3. 3

    Agents, rates and the night rule

    “Add multiple” pastes the floor with positions; hourly rates on the “Pay” tab; “Night hours” on the “Premiums” tab with the window and the percentage. “Invite team” prints a code and a QR for everyone.

  4. 4

    The first week and publish

    The night and early lines first, then the peak on top of the busy hours, then “Publish”. Next week is “Copy last week”, with the weekend agents rotated.

Frequently asked questions

Can InShift forecast the calls and build the rota from the forecast?▾

No. There is no forecasting and no automatic rota. You draw the lines as shift types and put agents on them; the planner offers each type only on the days it runs, flags a “Time conflict” when two shifts of one person overlap, and “Copy last week” repeats the pattern. The call curve comes from your telephony reports, and the table above is the shape most inbound floors end up with.

How do staggered starts and the peak line work?▾

Every line is a shift type with its own start and end, and a type carries the days of the week it runs on, so the “Peak 10:00–14:00” line exists on weekdays and is not offered on Saturday. An agent can be on the early line on Monday and the late line on Thursday: the shift is picked per cell. Two shifts on the same day for one person are allowed as long as they do not overlap, and the “Second shift in a day” rule can pay for the split if you want it to.

How are night hours and weekends paid?▾

Night hours by a rule: “Night hours” on the “Premiums” tab with a window and a percentage, applied to every hour inside the window on a published shift, for the whole company or for one position. Bank holidays by “Holiday work” from a calendar you fill in. There is no weekend multiplier as a rule: a Saturday that pays more is a shift type with its own price for agents on the “Shift price” model, or it lives in the hourly rate.

Can team leaders plan their own teams?▾

Yes, with a role. On the “Access rights” tab a role gets “View rota” and “Edit rota”, “Approve time-off” and “Approve substitutions”; the scopes are “Own”, “My locations” and “Entire network”, so a team leader of a single site edits the site’s rota with their own team’s rows grouped by department. Departments are a filter and grant no permissions, so two team leaders on one site work in the same rota.

What does an agent see and do in the app?▾

Their own shifts with “Who else is working”, a push before the shift and on every change, “Stats” with the hours and “Earned to date”, a swap with a colleague and a “Day off” request that go to the team leader, the team chat and the “Announcements”. Joining takes the invite code and the agent’s own email; the app is on the App Store and Google Play.

What does it cost for a floor of thirty-two?▾

Free for one location and up to 10 people. Beyond that it is a subscription per active person on the “Employees” list, with locations, payroll and the team app included. The numbers are on the pricing page.

Get the whole floor on one rota

The lines, the teams and the first week take an afternoon, and every agent sees their rota in the app the same day.

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