10 different call center scheduling solutions that do more than just assign shifts

There’s no shortage of call center scheduling software on the market. Some are specifically WFM solutions, while others are add-ons to contact center platforms, but specialized tools aren’t the best fit for every business.

Sometimes, if you have a small team of agents or serve customers in just one time zone, you may need to tack on a few basic scheduling features and call it a day.

But how can you choose the best solution for your business while optimizing your staffing levels—and budget?

What is scheduling software for call centers?

Scheduling software for call centers are tools that help supervisors and team leads carefully plan their agents’ work schedules to balance supply and demand, while providing prompt and effective customer service.

This type of software typically comes with forecasting features that can predict expected contact volumes and translate this data into staffing needs (such as how many agents you’ll need and which skills should be prioritized).

How does call center scheduling software work?

Call center employee scheduling software automatically generates shift schedules for supervisors and managers, across teams and time zones. Typically, they’re powered by predictive forecasting and can also track metrics like adherence and on-task time.

Compare the 10 best call center scheduling software

Now, let’s look at some of the top call center scheduling software out there. It’s important to note that this list isn’t exhaustive, and that it prioritizes versatile solutions that provide not only scheduling features but also other functionality that a call center or contact center will need, such as Ai coaching, Ai agent assists, and analytics.

1. Dialpad Support

2. RingCentral Contact Center

3. Deputy

4. Talkdesk

5. Zoho Voice

6. Shiftboard

7. injixo

8. Workforce.com

9. Assembled

10. Humanity

1. Dialpad Support

• 14-day free trial

• Starts at $80 per user per month

Dialpad Support is a user-friendly Ai-powered contact center platform that’s designed to simplify the process of planning and managing your support team’s shifts.

With built-in WFM features, it empowers supervisors to handle scheduling across multiple time zones effortlessly and also automates the scheduling process, freeing up your time to focus on more impactful tasks.

Dialpad also has a large number of integrations with HRIS, payroll and billing, CRM, and ticketing systems, consolidating all relevant information in one convenient place for your team.

Perhaps unique among the alternatives on this list, Dialpad’s contact center scheduling software is also visually uncluttered and intuitively designed, which starkly contrasts with more cluttered and less modern-looking alternatives:

Standout features and integrations

• Features: Real-time management and dashboards, automated forecasts with simple but powerful filtering, intraday and activity scheduling, flexible shift patterns, and more

• Integrations: Salesforce, Intercom, Dixa, HiBob, CharlieHR, BambooHR, FactorialHR, Personio, HR Partner, Justworks, SageHR, Calendly, Slack, Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, and more

2. RingCentral Contact Center

• Free trial: N/A

• Starts at $65 per user per month, billed annually¹

Like Dialpad Support, RingCentral Contact Center is a cloud contact center solution that lets businesses interact with customers across different channels including voice, digital, and social media. It does have WFM and scheduling features as add-ons to its contact center pricing plans.

Standout features and integrations

• Features: Real-time reporting, real-time schedule adherence, forecasting

• Integrations: IndusTrack, Microsoft 365, Google Suite, ServiceNow, Zendesk, NetSuite, and more

3. Deputy

• Free trial: Yes

• Starts at $4.50 per user per month (billed annually)²

Deputy is a call center scheduling platform that comes with the typical expected features like scheduling, time tracking, and forecasting. While it isn’t as robust as a fully integrated contact center solution like the top two software on this list, the user interface is quite clean and modern, similar to Dialpad Support. What’s important to note is you don’t get payroll integrations in the basic Scheduling plan—you’ll have to pay extra for them.²

Standout features and integrations

• Features: Auto-scheduling, labor compliance, time tracking, PTO management, task / activity assignments, and POS integration

• Integrations: Box, BambooHR, Clover, Gusto, Quickbooks, Gusto, HiBob, Indeed, IntelliHR, iPayroll, and more

4. Talkdesk

• Free trial: N/A

• WFM and scheduling features available only in CX Cloud Elite plan, which starts at $145 per user per month³

Similar to Dialpad Support and RingCentral Contact Center, Talkdesk’s main product is an omnichannel contact center platform, and you can add WFM and scheduling features as add-ons. Although they have a relatively robust solution, their scheduling features are only available on the most expensive plan, which knocks them down a bit on this list.

Standout features and integrations

• Features: Mobile app, shift templates, automated scheduling, adherence monitoring

• Integrations: Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow, Verint, Front, Freshdesk, Contractually, HelpScout, Zoho, SAP

5. Zoho Shift

• Free trial: Yes

• Starts at $0⁴

As part of the Zoho suite of products, which also includes a CRM and a basic call center solution, Zoho Shifts is a call center scheduling product that comes with time tracking and schedule drafting features. While it doesn’t have quite as many advanced AI features as some of the other options on this list, if your business is already a Zoho shop, this makes sense as it already integrates into other Zoho tools you may already be using.

Standout features and integrations

• Features: Shift planning, drag-and-drop shift builder, shift swapping, notifications

• Integrations: The entire Zoho Suite (including Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk, Zoho Mail, Zoho Campaigns, Zoho Analytics, Zoho Books, Zoho Recruit, and Zoho SalesIQ)

6. Shiftboard

• Free trial: N/A

• Contact their sales team for a quote

Shiftboard is a stand-alone employee scheduling software that is designed specifically to help with managing shift-based operations. What makes Shiftboard unique is that it has certain features that are designed to manage union-based workforces, for example, by incorporating internal procedures and union agreements into scheduling.

Standout features and integrations

• Features: Schedule automation, labor demand planning, leave and timesheet management

• Integrations: Workday, ADP, Zaddons, UKG, Ceridian, Workday, ADP, Oracle, SAP, Power BI, and more

7. injixo

• Free trial: N/A

• Starts at $299 per month⁵

injixo is a WFM solution that comes with forecasting, scheduling, intraday management, and other features. While it integrates with other contact center solutions, like Freshdesk, Five9, and Talkdesk, it doesn’t have those built-in like Dialpad Support or RingCentral Contact Center, which can complicate your tech stack if you want to streamline things.

Standout features and integrations

• Features: Automated scheduling, meeting planner, rule compliance, skill-based scheduling

• Integrations: Five9, Freshworks, Genesys Cloud, Mitel, NICE, Talkdesk, Vonage, Zendesk, and more

8. Workforce.com

• Free trial: N/A

• Contact their sales team for a quote

Workforce.com is a scheduling, HR, and payroll platform that’s designed for hourly workforces. Its features help supervisors and managers build schedules, onboard new hires, track time, and calculate complex pay rates. If you want to integrate your call center employee scheduling software with your HR stack (as opposed to your contact center), then Workforce.com could be a good option.

Standout features and integrations

• Features: Payroll compliance, forecasting, shift swapping, staffing dashboards

• Integrations: 401Go, Abacus, ADP, Bepoz, Clover, Gusto, Oracle, Paperchase, Paychex, and more

9. Assembled

• Free trial: N/A

• Contact their sales team for a quote

Assembled is a support operations platform that comes with contact center scheduling software features—they’re marketed specifically toward support teams (as opposed to other types of contact center teams), so this is worth noting in case you need certain features that aren’t relevant to support teams.

Standout features and integrations

• Features: Automation, scheduling, prebuilt templates, lunch break and rest automations, SLA and performance visualizer

• Integrations: Amazon Connect, Five9, Gladly, HiBob, Klaus, Talkdesk, UJET, Workday, Zendesk, and more

10. Humanity

• Free trial: N/A

• Contact their sales team for a quote

Humanity is an employee scheduling and time-tracking software that comes with a robust set of attendance and auto-scheduling features for a range of industries, including higher ed, healthcare, manufacturing, and hospitality. However, it does not include built-in contact center functionality, so you’ll have to integrate it with your contact center or call center solution.

Standout features and integrations

• Features: AI-powered forecasting, policy-driven scheduling, mobile app, timed self-scheduling

• Integrations: AccountMate, Activant, ADP, BambooHR, Oracle, Workday, and more

Other call center scheduling software options

Besides the top 10 above, other call center scheduling systems almost made the cut but either weren’t quite as robust (as a fully integrated contact center + scheduling platform) or not as advanced as the standalone scheduling options:

1. Nice CXone: A contact center solution with built-in scheduling features

2. Sling: An employee scheduling-specific platform

3. Connecteam: A scheduling, time-tracking, and payroll tool

4. TixTime: An employee scheduling software that markets itself as an alternative to Excel

5. When I Work: A call center scheduling tool that has to be added on to a contact center platform

6. Findmyshift: A call center scheduling solution that lets agents request, cancel, and swap shifts

7. ZoomShift: A cloud-based scheduling solution with a mobile app

8. CloudTalk: A call center platform with scheduling features

9. Verint Workforce Management: A CX automation platform for contact centers with built-in scheduling

10. Nextiva: A cloud contact center platform with scheduling and SLA features

How much does call center scheduling software cost?

The cost of call center scheduling software varies pretty widely depending on the features and provider. Prices can range from monthly subscriptions for more basic tools starting at around $10 to enterprise-level solutions costing over $100 per agent per month.

The 10 best call center scheduling software:

Pricing comparison chart First, to give you a sense of the price point for call center scheduling software, here’s a quick overview of the cost of the software on the list below:

How to choose call center scheduling software

As with buying any business software, there are so many options that it’s just not plausible to try them all out. So, start with a list of core requirements and non-negotiables:

1. Identify the business need you’re trying to address

Most teams aren’t looking for a call center scheduling software just to schedule shifts. For example, some might be trying to raise call center productivity while others need to manage a growing distributed team of agents that need to help customers in four or five different time zones. Or, maybe your CSAT scores have been dropping and you think scheduling inefficiently has something to do with it. Know what you’re trying to solve first.

2. Gather your basic requirements

This will impact your estimated cost and also inform the kind of functionality your contact center scheduling software will need to provide. For example, how many users will you need licenses for? What shift patterns does your team prefer? How collaborative is your shift swapping process?

3. Determine the integrations you’ll need

Every contact center has a tech stack. It might be just Google Calendar and Sheets, but a good call center scheduling tool will integrate with most major business applications such as HR and payroll software, calendaring apps, and more. Having native integrations with these tools can automatically sync data and save your team a lot of time.

4. Know which KPIs you’re measuring

Most contact centers measure similar core KPIs like occupancy rates or average handle time. But you may also measure more niche or unique KPIs that either your leadership team or board value. Look for software that can provide real-time data and dashboards to help your supervisors and agents monitor and align with those metrics.

Features of call center scheduling software

Even though every call center scheduling system has unique features, there are a few core features to look for:

Accurate forecasting

To effectively schedule your workforce, you need to be able to accurately predict the demand for work in your contact center. For customer support teams, as an example, accurate forecasting is especially vital because the volume of customer inquiries can vary significantly depending on the time of the year, and it lets you predict with a reasonable amount of confidence how much coverage you’ll need.

Automated scheduling

To really help your supervisors save time, a good call center scheduling tool should be able to take scheduling rules and priorities, and use them to automate your scheduling days, weeks, and even months in advance.

Activity scheduling

Activity or intraday scheduling is a more granular approach to call center scheduling that involves assigning different tasks to individual team members within a specific shift. Activity scheduling is good for breaking down the smaller tasks agents might need to work on throughout the shift.

For example, you could monitor individual tasks performed by your customer support team throughout their shift (such as live chat, phone calls, or responding to emails) instead of just giving them blocks of time with no specific assignments.

Benefits of call center scheduling software

Equipping your team with call center scheduling software benefits not only your agents and managers, but also your customers—and your bottom line too.

Improved resource planning

Because managers can see gaps and demand levels more easily with scheduling software, it empowers them to see peak periods and improve their resource planning. This can help prevent both over- or under-staffing.

Cost optimization

As a secondary benefit, being able to staff more accurately also means you can save on costs because you’ve got the right number of agents available to handle the number of customer calls and messages coming in. In fact, Nucleus Research found that standalone WFM platforms pay back $12.24 for every dollar spent.

A better customer experience

In the end, this benefits your customers too. A good scheduling solution helps contact center teams have enough agents to reduce wait times and make sure they have agents with the right skills to manage more complex questions if needed, which ultimately improves the overall customer experience.

Trends in call center scheduling software

With so many data points and metrics available in the dashboard, which trends should you be paying attention to? Here are a few to consider as a starting point:

• Call volumes: Any good contact center scheduling software will be able to forecast demand based on historical call and messaging volumes. This trend is crucial to monitor because certain spikes in volume may be a recurring trend—or may be a result of a unique event or one-off industry change.

• An increasing number of temporary staff: As you probably noticed in some solutions on the list above, there is a growing market for software that’s built for hourly workforces. With staffing models changing and full-time, permanent employment gradually decreasing, your software should have features that address these staffing models (e.g., on-call shifts and labor laws.)

• Mobile-friendliness: More and more employees are working on the go, often from their mobile devices—that includes your workforce schedulers. Look for software that has a well-designed mobile app that makes it easy for agents to swap shifts, communicate about changes, and so on.

Revamp your shift management with Dialpad call center scheduling software

As you’re looking for the right call center scheduling system for your business, look beyond just the feature list.

Consider factors like your business’ size and complexity, any specific needs your industry might have, and how easy it will be to implement your software.

Dialpad WFM comes fully integrated into a robust, AI-powered contact center solution—Dialpad Support—and incorporates advanced workforce scheduling features in a single pane of glass.

Get a hands-on look at how it works today!

¹ringcentral.com/office/plansandpricing_f.html

²deputy.com/pricing

³talkdesk.com/pricing/ 

⁴zoho.com/shifts/pricing.html 

⁵njixo.com/pricing