Let’s assume you’ve been asked to provide forecasts for an inbound call centre to help get the staffing right, both at the overall employed level and at the hour-by-hour level required for efficient, customer-friendly scheduling.

That means we need to work out the weekly-level forecast (to get the employment right) and the intra-day forecast (for scheduling).

We’ll also assume that you have historical data to a level of granularity that matches the forecast that has been requested.  So, at your fingertips you have data by quarter hour / half hour / hour as necessary, and by day going back several months.

It’s also to be assumed that you have some information about the future.  Are customer numbers expected to remain the same, go up, or go down?  Are there any major product launches on the horizon?  Are you expecting to be automating one contact type or another?