How to Bring Your A-Game to Intraday

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Effective intraday management hinges on making timely decisions to protect the plan for the day ahead. But there are a few common mistakes that can quietly undermine performance – often without you realizing until much later.

That’s why we asked our panel of WFM experts – including representatives from Affinity Water and Indeed.com – for their top tips on what really distinguishes the best from the rest when it comes to intraday success.

Don’t Cancel Offline Activities Every Time Service Level Dips

Rachael Normandin, Associate Business Strategist at Indeed — Rachael Normandin

One of the top mistakes in intraday management is cancelling offline activities right away when service level drops.

While it can feel like the quickest way to recover, I think the better approach is to take a step back and watch what happens over the next couple of intervals.

A few bad intervals don’t always mean the trend will continue. Sometimes things naturally level out once a spike passes. Because of that, I usually like to monitor for a bit before making any immediate changes.

If service levels don’t improve after that, then it may make sense to move some offline activities to another time. But if things start to recover, I think it’s important to leave those offline activities in place.

When we constantly cancel offline activities every time service level dips, occupancy can quickly skyrocket. It can also create an environment where agents are on the phones for long periods without the breaks or offline work originally planned.

Contributed by: Rachael Normandin, Lead Workforce Management Analyst at Indeed.com

Investigate the Root Cause – Don’t Just “Add More Agents”

Don’t conflate average handle time (AHT) variance with a staffing problem. When queues build, the instinct is to add people and hope the problem shrinks.

But if handle time has spiked because of a system issue or a more complex contact type, adding agents won’t fix the root cause. You need to investigate what changed, not just cover it with resource.

Contributed by: Doug Casterton, Workforce Optimization Consultant and Co-Founder of Right Time Right Place

Prevent Confusion and Duplicated Efforts With Simple “Who Owns What” Rules

Tim Milburn, Planning Manager at emovis — Tim Milburn

If planners, team leaders, and real‑time analysts aren’t aligned, decisions get duplicated, delayed, or contradicted. Clear communication channels, shared dashboards and simple “who owns what” rules prevent confusion and keep everyone working from the same picture.

Also, avoid falling into the trap of rigid adherence to the plan. Intraday management requires flexibility – making smart trade‑offs, reassigning capacity, and protecting coaching or training when it can still be delivered without harming service.

Ultimately, intraday mistakes aren’t usually dramatic – they’re small behaviours that add friction. Avoiding them means staying proactive, communicating clearly, and adjusting with intent rather than panic. This keeps both your operation and your people in a far better rhythm.

Contributed by: Tim Milburn, Global Workforce Planning Manager at Emovis

Avoid Over-Segmentation of Queues and Agents

Pavlos Vasilakis, WFM & CX Consultant, WFM Geek — Pavlos Vasilakis

One of the biggest mistakes is over-segmentation. Too many queues, and agents who are not upskilled across them, reduce flexibility immediately.

Even if the real-time team can see the issue, they cannot react if they do not have enough coverage or if agents are too specialized.

You need large enough workload buckets and agents who can handle multiple topics. Without that, intraday becomes reactive instead of proactive.

I have worked in an organization with more than 400 queues. At that point, the question is not only how you manage it, but how many intraday analysts you need just to keep things running.

In many cases, this level of complexity comes from trying to solve reporting gaps – rather than focusing on what the operation actually needs.

The impact is clear. Reduced flexibility, lower efficiency, poor occupancy, and higher costs. A better approach is to invest in proper routing and agent upskilling instead of continuously splitting work into smaller groups. Keep it simple, build flexibility into the system, and allow intraday teams to act quickly and effectively.

Contributed by: Pavlos Vasilakis, WFM & CX Consultant at WFM Geek

If you want to learn how to ensure urgent queries have priority, read our article: How to Prioritize Urgent Queries

Use Scenario-Based Thinking to Make Decisions Ahead of Time

The most fundamental mistake in intraday management I find is treating it as a real-time-first function. My approach is “by the time something is visible on your screens, you’re already behind”.

Effective intraday means being some time ahead of everyone else and not watching problems arrive but anticipating them before they do.

This starts with an SOP model. Do you have defined triggers set for queues, people or events? Do you know what action follows each one?

Quite frankly, if you’re deciding what to do when the queue hits a threshold, you’ve waited too long and you’re now improvising. The decisions should have already been made. The intraday function executes the plan; it doesn’t write it in real time.

Scenario-based thinking is key here. For example:

When five people are about to break for lunch, two 1-2-1s are already running, three called in sick this morning, your first thought should be what is your shrinkage tolerance?
How many can you absorb before the contact centre becomes inoperable?
What did you plan for, and where are you against it?

If the team can’t answer those questions before the interval hits, they’re not managing intraday, they are reacting to it.

The same logic applies to unscheduled events. This could be a fire alarm, a single system outage, or weather event, to name some, but these shouldn’t be surprises! They’re scenarios that you already should have modelled for.

Contributed by: Kim Sektnan, Workforce Management Manager at Affinity Water Limited

Educate the Wider Operation on What’s Now Possible in Intraday Management

Bryce Ackerman, Workforce Management Internal Consultant at Roche — Bryce Ackerman

Intraday management and the tools at our disposal have seemingly changed a lot this millennium. Terms and expectations like “traffic control”, “route the calls”, “move breaks and lunches”, and “change skills” were once the norm.

The role was to recognize an issue and make any and every adjustment possible to protect the Service Level.

Unfortunately, old habits and expectations die hard for both the WFM real-time team and the Operations teams they support.

Ask a frontline supervisor what they need from an intraday analyst, and the expectation will sound very similar to what it did 25 years ago.

So, we get stuck in the cycle where Operations wants to keep doing what they’re doing and WFM continues with the same reactive routine that they always have.

Yes, there’s always nuance and differences. But the real opportunity is not reacting quicker and alerting supervisors to outliers. The opportunity is in proactively planning. Show supervisors ahead of time that you’re on it.

Talk through the ‘we are different’ mentality and find common ground on ways to be more proactive and less reactive, as well as maximizing technology to reduce the manual work and time that comes with it.

Contributed by: Bryce Ackerman, Workforce Management Internal Consultant at Roche

To find out how you can move from simply sharing information to creating meaningful connection, read our article: What Does Great Internal Communication Really Look Like?

Prioritize Minimal, Targeted Interventions and Give Changes Time to Work

Try to avoid over-correcting! Yes, it’s tempting to pull every lever from your playbook at once, for example, to cancel or reschedule breaks, move everyone to voice, pause coaching or 1-2-1s etc…

But unnecessary escalation can damage morale and make the rest of the day harder to recover. The best approach is to prioritize minimal, targeted interventions and give changes time to work.

Contributed by: Tim Milburn, Global Workforce Planning Manager at Emovis

…And Ask Yourself, “Are You Really Doing Real Intraday Management or Just Intraday Observation?”

Finally, the quiet one: treating intraday as a reporting function rather than a decision function. If your intraday team’s main output is a dashboard update, they’re not doing intraday management… They’re doing intraday observation!

The value is in the call, not the commentary. Good intraday management is mostly invisible.

When it’s working, nothing dramatic happens. The teams that get there are the ones who’ve done the thinking before the day starts, not during it.

Contributed by: Doug Casterton, Workforce Optimization Consultant and Co-Founder of Right Time Right Place

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