Phone · 08:00–12:00
Short by 1 agent
Not enough phone-skilled people are available this early. Options: move a flexible agent’s start, offer overtime, or accept a lower service level — the manager decides.
Customer service workforce planning
Match support capacity to customer demand.
RosterTern helps support teams forecast ticket volumes and handling time by channel, then recommends schedules around agent skills, availability and service targets — for managers to approve.
TUESDAY · NORTHWIND SHOP SUPPORT● FORECAST
08:00PHONE10 3 2 SHORT 1
09:00CHAT 20 4 4 ON TIME
10:00EMAIL25 4 4 ON TIME
11:00PHONE26 4 3 SHORT 1
13:00CHAT 23 4 7 +3 SPARE
16:00EMAIL20 4 4 ON TIME
The shape of a day
Demand has a shape. Most rosters are a straight line.
Contacts climb through the morning, dip at lunch and rise again after work. A roster that puts the same number of people on every hour is short when it matters and idle when it doesn’t — and with labour making up most of a support budget, both cost real money.
Demand forecasting
Volumes by hour and by channel — with a range, not a promise.
RosterTern learns from your historical ticket exports: seasonality, weekdays, campaign effects. Every forecast carries an uncertainty band, and every day it is compared with what actually arrived.
Contacts per hour for the sample team. Whiskers show a ±12% range.
Handling time
“Average handling time” hides five different jobs.
A password reset takes three minutes; a refund dispute takes nine. RosterTern groups tickets by topic and estimates handling time for each, so a week full of returns doesn’t ambush a roster built on averages.
- Where is my order?4.5 min
- Returns & refunds9.0 min
- Payment problems7.5 min
- Account & password3.0 min
- Product questions6.0 min
Schedule recommendations
Rosters built around skills, availability and service targets.
The optimiser places each agent inside the hours they said they can work, and gives each hour to the channel that needs them most. Managers adjust and approve; nothing is published on its own.
Agent
8910111213141516171819
BayoPhone
ChikaChat
EfeEmail
GbengaPhone
HalimaChat
JumokeChat
KemiEmail
MusaPhone
PeterEmail
RasheedPhone
SadeChat
AdaChat · Email
- Chat
- Phone
Coverage alerts
Know about tomorrow’s gaps today.
Email · 08:00–10:00
Short by 1 agent
Not enough email-skilled people are available this early. Options: move a flexible agent’s start, offer overtime, or accept a lower service level — the manager decides.
Chat · 12:00–16:00
Spare capacity
Up to three more chat agents than needed after lunch — a natural slot for training or email backlog.
Computed from the sample forecast and roster used throughout this page.
How it works
Five steps from spreadsheet to approved roster.
- 01
Import
Historical ticket exports and an availability spreadsheet.
- 02
Forecast
Volumes and handling time by hour, channel and topic.
- 03
Recommend
A schedule that respects skills, availability and targets.
- 04
Approve
Managers adjust and approve before anything is published.
- 05
Compare
Forecasts are checked against actual workload every day.
Ground rules
A planning tool, not a time clock.
Managers approve every schedule
Recommendations are a starting point; nothing reaches agents until a manager signs off.
Availability is respected
Shifts are placed only inside the hours agents said they can work.
Forecasts show their uncertainty
Ranges, not single numbers — and accuracy is reported against actuals.
No surveillance
RosterTern plans capacity. It does not monitor keystrokes, screens or individual productivity.
Why it matters
People are most of the cost — and most of the experience.
Industry benchmarks from the sources linked — mostly vendor and analyst summaries, so treat ranges as indicative. Not RosterTern results.
Who it’s for
Teams where demand moves faster than the rota.
Outsourced support providers
Many clients, many targets, one workforce.
Ecommerce support teams
Sales, launches and delivery peaks.
Growing SaaS companies
From one shift to follow-the-sun.
Organisation types are prospective customers; no affiliation is implied.
Pricing
Priced per scheduled agent.
Illustrative pricing for a proposed product, to be agreed with pilot teams.
Team
$9 per agent / month
- Up to 50 agents
- Forecasts by channel
- Schedule recommendations
- Coverage alerts
Operations
$14 per agent / month
- Unlimited agents
- Topic-level handling time
- Forecast vs actual reports
- Multiple sites & queues
Outsourcer
Custom
- Multi-client workspaces
- Per-client service targets
- API & helpdesk integration
- Dedicated support
Proposed platform
Proposed architecture on AWS.
- Amazon SageMaker AIWorkload forecasting
- Amazon BedrockGrouping ticket topics
- Amazon S3Historical support exports
- Amazon DynamoDBAvailability and schedules
- AWS LambdaForecast updates
Proposed, not deployed. This website and the planner run in your browser on fictional data.
The team
Who’s building RosterTern.
ZL
Founder & CEO
Zainab Lawal
Zainab ran support operations through launches, sales and outages, and built RosterTern so that Monday mornings stop being a surprise. She leads product and every pilot team.
EO
Co-founder
Emeka Obi
Emeka leads the forecasting and scheduling engine — the models that predict demand by channel and the optimiser that turns them into rosters people can live with.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
What data do we need to start?
Historical ticket exports from your helpdesk (with timestamps, channel and handling time if you have it) and a spreadsheet of agent availability and skills.
Does RosterTern publish schedules automatically?
No. It recommends a schedule; a manager adjusts and approves it before agents see anything.
Does it track individual agents’ productivity?
No. It plans capacity at team level. It is not a monitoring or performance-scoring tool.
Is RosterTern live?
Not yet. It is a proposed product; the roster planner is a prototype running in your browser on fictional data.
Pilot
Bring one team and three months of tickets.
A pilot starts with your historical ticket exports and an availability spreadsheet for one team. You compare RosterTern’s forecasts and schedules with what actually happened before relying on anything.
Or write to zainab@rostertern.com — Zainab Lawal replies personally.