Creating and managing work schedules for your call center agents can be a mammoth undertaking, especially for 24/7 operations like help desks. But call center scheduling software can offer a great solution.
This article will take you through our top call center software for scheduling, and what makes them so highly-rated. Let’s check them out!

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Article Roadmap

• The Best Call Center Scheduling Software
  • Genesys Cloud
  • CXone
  • Avaya
  • Cisco Contact Center Solution
  • Dialpad
• Needs Analysis
• Next Steps

Best Call Center Scheduling Software

With all the call center scheduling platforms on the market, it’s difficult to find the right tool for your organization. To simplify your search, we’ve compiled a list of the best call center scheduling tools available now, according to our research.

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Genesys Cloud

Genesys Cloud is a cloud-based contact center solution that offers omnichannel communications support and an integrated platform for managing your call center. It also offers extensive workforce management and campaign management tools.

Workforce forecasting with Genesys Cloud. Source

Highest Rated Features According to Our Data

• Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling — 100
• What-if Scenarios — 100
• Calendar Support — 100
• ACD-based Routing — 100
• Time-based Routing — 100

Top Benefits

• Solid Core Features: Genesys Cloud offers a robust set of core features, including automated call routing features, employee performance and time tracking, as well as workforce forecasting and scheduling.
• Increased Workforce Engagement: Apart from creating employee schedules, Genesys Cloud also focuses on engaging and incentivizing agents by gamifying KPIs, offering interactive training and performance tracking. According to Gallup, businesses with engaged employees show a 10% increase in customer loyalty, because employees who are invested in their work serve customers better too.
• Low Learning Curve: 89% of users gave positive feedback on Genesys Cloud’s user experience. The interface is simple and easy to learn. The platform also allows users to design and automate their own workflows.
• Streamlined Call Routing: Genesys Cloud allows you to automatically route calls to agents based on work hours, time zones, skill levels and other pre-set criteria. This simplifies call center scheduling and reduces wait times for customers.
• Better Support: Features like cloud-based deployment, remote agent support and VoIP support make Genesys Cloud perfect for virtual call centers. Additional features like time zone rules dialing and follow-the-sun routing are helpful for multinational teams.

Primary Features

• Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling: Genesys Cloud can forecast call volumes and estimate staff requirements for handling those volumes based on historical data. The platform then generates schedules with automated shift allocation and workflow rules to ensure smooth call center operations.
• Holiday Routing: This feature allows the platform to add and account for holiday calendars and redirect all the calls coming during the holidays to a particular extension or voicemail using an auto attendant.
• Configurable Business Hours Rules: This allows for the company to have different call handling settings during and after business hours. For example, during business hours, you may route calls to agents based on shift schedules, skills and time zone, and, after business hours, you can route calls to voicemail or relevant extensions.
• Time-based Routing: This form of routing ensures that calls are only routed to agents who are on shift. The platform automatically detects whether an agent is on shift or not by analyzing time zones, time of day and assigned business hours.
• Remote Agent Support: Genesys Cloud ensures facilities for companies with remote agents by providing virtual contact center tools like VoIP telephony and cloud-based deployment. A 2021 Gartner report found that around 70% of call center agents prefer working remotely.
• What-if Scenarios: What-if scenarios create multiple hypothetical situations to estimate the impact of changes in call patterns or among staff based on performance, revenue, cost and profit. These help forecast call volumes and staff requirements, allowing you to create schedules accordingly.

Limitations

• Can be prone to lags, outages and glitches.

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CXone

CXone is a call center automation and scheduling platform by NICE. It provides comprehensive tools for omnichannel communications support, workforce intelligence and call center analytics. It’s suitable for both inbound and outbound call centers and can be deployed on-premise or virtually.

Employee engagement with CXone. Source

Highest Rated Features According to Our Data

• Configurable Caller Wait Time — 100
• Priority Routing — 100
• Time-based Routing — 100
• Calendar Support — 100
• API Extensibility — 100

Top Benefits

• Personalized Interactions: CXone can use customer data and sentiment analysis to provide a more customized experience. It also allows for personalized routing, so customers can be connected to the same agent or an agent from the same team every time they call.
• Streamlined Call Routing: Automatically route incoming calls to the right agents using tools like automatic call distribution, ensuring your customers get where they need to go and your agents never miss a call.
• Increased Support Options: The unified dashboard allows agents to maintain relationships with customers through multiple support channels. By displaying information like contact history, notes and previous conversations, it also gives agents greater visibility into customer needs.

Primary Features

• Automatic Call Distribution: This feature automatically routes incoming calls to available agents based on pre-designated criteria, including shift schedules, time zones and department.
• Virtual Call Center Support: CXone offers tools for remote agents and other necessary features for running a virtual call center, like a cloud-based infrastructure, soft-phone support and a unified platform.
• Integrations Support: The platform provides out-of-the-box integrations with popular CRM, communications and office software like Salesforce, Zoom and Microsoft 365.
• Workforce Management: Along with employee scheduling tools, CXone also offers other workforce management tools like performance tracking, campaign and list management, and workforce forecasting.
• UCaaS: CXone offers UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service), a cloud-based, unified platform that provides multi-channel communications support. You can also use pre-built APIs to create a single view for all agent interactions.
• Agent Desktop: A unified agent desktop allows agents and supervisors to communicate with customers and team members, find and manage contact information, search for existing interactions, provide standard responses and track customer journeys. It’s part of CXone’s suite of UCaaS tools.
• Time Zone Rules Dialing: For outbound call centers, time zone rules dialing ensures that agents don’t end up calling contacts at inappropriate hours. This feature detects a contact’s time zone and determines the best time to call.
• Follow-the-sun Routing: For 24/7 inbound call centers, follow-the-sun routing automatically routes calls between offices in different time zones. If a customer can’t be routed to an agent in their time zone because it’s past business hours, the call gets automatically routed to a call center in a different time zone.

Limitations

• Not the best solution for small businesses.
• Does not offer built-in native mobile app capabilities to enable on-the-go call center scheduling.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• Native Mobile Apps — Supported through partner integrations.

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Avaya

Avaya is a cloud-based call center tool and business communications software. It provides a wide range of workforce engagement, team management and employee scheduling tools for call centers. It’s an incredibly scalable platform, suitable for businesses of all sizes.

Call center management with Avaya. Source

Highest Rated Features According to Our Data

• Time-based Routing — 100
• Time Zone Rules Dialing — 100
• Native Mobile Application — 100
• Agent Desktop — 100
• Virtual Call Center Support — 100

Top Benefits

• Scalability: Avaya’s scalability makes it very suitable for growing businesses of all sizes. Avaya also recognizes that different organizations have different needs and offers multiple contact center solutions geared towards different businesses.
• Better Teamwork: Avaya provides a streamlined team management and collaboration workflow. Apart from workforce scheduling, you can also track team and individual agent performance, monitor calls in real time and offer coaching.
• Device-as-a-Service Offerings: Avaya offers on-premise call center infrastructure like telephones on a subscription basis. You can combine their DaaS offerings with their cloud platform, or pick the one you want.
• 24/7 Support for Companies: Avaya offers 24/7 customer support. The support package includes remote monitoring tools enabling virtual support and bug fixes, and replacement of parts for hardware. Avaya’s One Cloud CPaaS provides additional managed services for handling your call center operations.

Primary Features

• Agent Desktop: This feature gives agents a unified communications dashboard to access all of their work, as well as a console through which they can track and manage their call handling workflow.
• Configurable Business Hour Rules: You can set business hours for each of your call centers, ensuring that calls only come through when agents are active. Outside of business hours, calls can be routed to voicemail, extensions, or, with follow-the-sun routing, to a call center in a different time zone.
• Remote Agent Support: Avaya offers support for remote agents through tools like virtual phone systems and computer telephony integration, two integral aspects of virtual call centers.
• Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling: Avaya can help you create and manage schedules for your call center team. Forecasting tools help you predict call volumes and create schedules accordingly.
• API Extensibility: You can add additional functionality and features to the platform using APIs through connectors like JSON, REST and OAUTH 2.0.

Limitations

• Limited workforce forecasting tools. No what-if scenarios.
• Some users report stability issues, including lags and glitches.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• What-if Scenarios — Not supported.

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Cisco Contact Center Solution

Cisco Contact Center Solution is a call center platform by Cisco that offers an extensive range of tools, including call handling, internal collaboration, team management and contact routing. It’s suitable for mid-sized to large companies and can be deployed on-premise or through the cloud.

Call center analytics with Cisco Contact Center Solution. Source

Highest Rated Features According to Our Data

• Workforce Forecasting And Scheduling — 100
• API Extensibility — 100
• Calendar Support — 100
• Call Queuing System — 100
• Follow-the-sun Routing — 100

Top Benefits

• Improved Productivity: Cisco Contact Center Solution can help you improve your call center’s productivity by providing more streamlined workflows, better scheduling and reduced wait-times.
• Smoother Performance: Cisco’s customizable workflows, predictive analysis-based call routing and integrated collaboration platform help create a smooth operational workflow that reduces delays and improves performance.
• Customization: Cisco has a drag-and-drop interface for creating, editing and validating workflows for your call center. You can also configure courtesy callbacks and transfer activity based on variables like estimated wait time and place in the queue, adjusting your call center’s functions to your specific customer needs.
• Better Business Strategies: Cisco offers a robust management portal for more effective team management. Supervisors can use this portal to track team performance, monitor calls in real-time and log out inactive team members. Cisco also provides various analytics and reporting tools, like predictive analytics tools, financial analytics tools and journey path analysis, to help you gain actionable insights, make more informed decisions and provide a better customer experience.

Primary Features

• Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling: These two capabilities go hand-in-hand, since accurate workforce forecasting helps you create better call center schedules. Automatically tracked variables like call volume help you visualize your needs and create schedules accordingly.
• Employee Performance Management:Apart from employee scheduling, you also get performance management tools to track agent performance through scorecards and incentivize them to perform better.
• Calendar Support: This feature allows you to integrate your call center scheduling platform with popular calendar apps like Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook.
• Call Routing: Cisco allows you to route calls to available agents automatically. It also offers skills-based routing, time-based routine, follow-the-sun routing and priority routing to eliminate missed calls and ensure that each call is routed to an agent best equipped to handle it.
• Native Mobile Application: You can access Cisco Contact Center Solutions on the go through native mobile apps for Android and iOS.

Limitations

• Not ideal for small businesses.
• The support suite is complex, which could cause issues with deployment and implementation.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• What-if Scenarios — Not supported.

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Dialpad

Dialpad is a cloud-based call center management platform that can streamline call center administration, improve agent productivity and provide a secure, unified communications infrastructure. Dialpad includes basic but robust workforce management features, including call center scheduling and campaign management.

Automated call routing with Dialpad. Source

Highest Rated Features According to Our Data

• Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling — 100
• Calendar Support — 100
• API Extensibility — 100
• Priority Routing — 100
• Skills-based Routing — 100

Top Benefits

• Robust Administrative Tools: Dialpad’s core features include a comprehensive web portal and user portal. These tools allow you to manage all the administrative operations of your call center from an easy-to-use and accessible platform.
• Improved Productivity: Dialpad’s cloud-hosted call center offers improved productivity by streamlining operational workflows and providing an integrated, unified platform for your contact center.
• Secure Connections: 86% of customers surveyed by Cisco said that they care about data security. Keep sensitive customer data secure through layered security and call encryption features, even during events like network outages.

Primary Features

• Configurable Caller Wait Time: Dialpad can use a pre-set maximum wait-time for each customer to set up call queues and ensure that each customer is serviced by an agent within an appropriate time-frame.
• Call Routing System: Dialpad’s call routing system automatically allocates incoming calls to appropriate, available agents. The platform offers ACD routing, time-based routing, skill-based routing and more.
• Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling: Workforce forecasting and scheduling tools help you forecast call volumes based on daily patterns and create agent schedules accordingly.
• Native Mobile App: You can use Dialpad’s native Android and iOS apps to access the platform on the go.
• Calendar Support: You can integrate the platform with popular calendar tools like Google Calendar. This helps supervisors create and manage schedules more efficiently. It also allows agents to track their schedules better.
• VoIP Support: Built-in VoIP tools allow you to set up a call center without needing telephony infrastructure or phone lines, allowing your agents to get to work faster and helping you save on hardware costs.
• Integrations: The software offers a wide range of integrations through its app store. You can integrate the platform with Hubspot, Zendesk, Microsoft Teams and various other third-party platforms.

Limitations

• Limited workforce management tools. No performance management tools.
• Does not support what-if scenarios for call center forecasting.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• What-if Scenarios — Not supported.
• Employee Performance Management — Not supported.

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Needs Analysis

We’ve taken you through our top picks for call center scheduling software, their features, benefits and limitations. While each of these platforms provides extensive tools and resources for scheduling and management, picking the right tool for your organization requires a thoughtful strategy.

Before selecting a tool for your company, it’s important to conduct a thorough requirement analysis and determine what your organization needs. Our requirements template is a great resource if you’re looking for a starting point.

Next, shortlist your software options, determining which tools meet your requirements best. Some factors you should consider include your budget, mode of deployment, the extent of training and onboarding tools offered by the platform, maintenance and technical support.

Next Steps

The right call center scheduling tools can be a game-changer in your call center operations. We hope our list gives you some insight into what to look for in the right solution.

Ready to take the next step? Check out our comparison report to learn about more industry leaders in call center software and how they stack up.

So, what do you think are the most important features of call center scheduling software? Let us know in the comments!