Forecasting emails and chats

[newbe]

Hello everyone!

Part of my responsibility in the position I hold is to develop a forecast for the Internet Department to determine the number of emails and chats received each day by hour. Being new to this accepting challenge, I am curious if anyone has experience in this field?

I have all the tools available to help me determine how many emails and chats we receive each week by hour and day, but I need to develop a forecast to determine what those numbers will be for the following year based on last years performance.

I have approximately 15 months of history to help me determine what may be ahead in the upcoming months. As of right now, I have been creating the forecast based on a percentage increase of what we did previously. Being a major catalog company, I am curious if there are ways some may have tried to determine incoming emails based on demand orders, call volume, circulation etc. If you know of a way or a site or place to contact for assistance, I would greatly appreciate any assistance provided.

Thank you,

Newbe

[Andrew Bates]

Hi Newbe; We have some experience helping companies prepare staffing forecasts. In fact I have a little excel calculator that you can use to run your forecasts- Drop me a email with your name, title, company and email address and I will send it to you. andrew.bates@sykes.com

[gkern]

I can help you or at least get you in touch with somebody in our organization that can. We have experience in managing/forecasting e-mail and chat for various clients, including catalog retailers.


Greg Kern
CallTech
512-261-0409
gkern@calltech.com