Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Inquiry Planner

🎯 Role Definition

The Inquiry Planner is responsible for end-to-end planning and management of inbound and outbound inquiries across channels (phone, email, web, CRM, and case-management platforms). This role designs and executes capacity plans, triage rules, escalation paths, and reporting to ensure SLAs and quality standards are met while continuously improving throughput, accuracy, and stakeholder satisfaction. The Inquiry Planner partners with operations, customer service, compliance, legal, product, and analytics teams to translate demand signals into actionable plans, optimize resource allocation, and implement process improvements.

Key SEO terms: Inquiry Planner, inquiry management, capacity planning, SLA management, case management, CRM, workforce planning, escalation management, process improvement, data-driven planning.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Workforce Planning Analyst or Capacity Planner
Customer Service Team Lead or Case Coordinator
Operations Analyst or Business Process Analyst

Advancement To:

Senior Inquiry Planner / Head of Inquiry Operations
Workforce Planning Manager / Capacity Planning Lead
Director of Customer Operations or Service Delivery

Lateral Moves:

Process Improvement / Continuous Improvement Manager
Case Management or Escalations Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Design, implement, and maintain an inquiry intake and triage framework that ensures inquiries are classified, prioritized, and routed to the appropriate team or owner within defined SLAs.
Create and maintain detailed capacity and demand forecasts by channel, geography, and inquiry type using historical data, trend analysis, and seasonality adjustments to inform staffing and resource allocation.
Develop and manage workforce plans (shift patterns, breaks, contingency rosters) that align staffing to forecasted demand while minimizing cost and maximizing service levels.
Own SLA and KPI definitions for inquiry handling (first response time, time to resolution, backlog age, transfer rate, re-open rate) and drive improvements through root cause analysis and targeted action plans.
Coordinate cross-functional escalation protocols with legal, compliance, product, and technical teams to ensure timely resolution of complex or high-risk inquiries.
Build, maintain, and optimize triage scripts, decision trees, and automation rules in the CRM/case management system to reduce manual handling and improve routing accuracy.
Monitor real-time queue status, backlog health, and service-level adherence; mobilize ad-hoc resources and re-prioritization when threshold alerts are triggered.
Run weekly and monthly demand reviews with operations leadership and stakeholders to validate assumptions, update forecasts, and align on mitigation strategies for peak periods.
Lead testing and rollout of new intake channels, tools, or workflow automations, ensuring minimal disruption to service levels and clear change management for frontline teams.
Prepare and present executive-level performance reports and data-driven recommendations for process or resourcing changes that impact cost, quality, or customer experience.
Maintain and enforce quality assurance standards for inquiry documentation to ensure audit-readiness and regulatory compliance for high-sensitivity or regulated inquiries.
Manage third-party vendor intake handoffs and SLAs where external partners contribute to inquiry resolution or overflow support.
Define and maintain service catalogs and routing matrices that map inquiry types to downstream owners, required attachments, and escalation paths.
Conduct root cause investigations on repeat issues or systemic failures and own cross-functional corrective action plans to prevent recurrence.
Partner with learning & development to design onboarding and ongoing training curriculums that reduce ramp time and improve first-contact resolution.
Implement and maintain dashboards and self-serve reporting for frontline managers and stakeholders to enable data-driven daily decision making.
Establish and maintain runbooks for common incident types, surge scenarios, and business continuity to ensure rapid, standardized responses during outages or spikes.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives (Lean, Six Sigma or equivalent) to reduce cycle time, handoffs, and variability across the inquiry lifecycle.
Oversee data hygiene and taxonomy governance for inquiry categorization to ensure analytics and ML models are trained on high-quality, consistent labels.
Facilitate cross-functional workshops to align stakeholders on policy interpretation, process changes, and prioritization of backlog items requiring product or policy updates.
Coordinate periodic audits of inquiry handling processes and remediate findings to align with internal controls and external regulatory requirements.
Act as the primary liaison between operations and analytics teams to translate business questions into data requirements, dashboards, and predictive models to improve planning accuracy.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Assist with tagging, metadata, and taxonomy updates to reflect new inquiry categories or policy changes.
Serve as subject matter expert for inquiry lifecycle tooling and provide tier-2 support for configuration issues.
Draft and maintain SOPs, process maps, and training materials that document inquiry handling workflows.
Participate in cross-functional project teams implementing new products, channels, or regulatory requirements to assess impacts on workload and resources.
Support capacity planning for special events, seasonal promotions, and regulatory deadlines by modeling scenario-based staffing needs.
Run health-checks, QA sampling, and bi-weekly calibration sessions with quality teams to ensure scoring consistency.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Proficiency with CRM and case-management systems (Salesforce Service Cloud, Zendesk, Microsoft Dynamics, ServiceNow or equivalent) including routing, automation, and reporting configuration.
Advanced Excel skills (pivot tables, array formulas, VBA/macros) for modeling and scenario analysis.
Experience with workforce management (WFM) and forecasting tools (NICE, Kronos, Calabrio, Verint, Anaplan or comparable).
Familiarity with SQL for extracting and validating operational metrics and cleansing datasets.
Ability to build and interpret dashboards in BI tools (Tableau, Power BI, Looker) to drive operational decisions.
Strong understanding of SLA/KPI design, operational metrics, and statistical forecasting techniques.
Experience configuring and tuning triage rules, auto-responders, and case assignment engines in production systems.
Knowledge of process improvement methodologies (Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen) and experience applying them in service operations.
Familiarity with compliance and regulatory requirements relevant to inquiry handling (GDPR, HIPAA, FINRA, FCRA, or industry-specific regulations).
Working knowledge of scripting or automation frameworks (Zapier, RPA tools like UiPath/Blue Prism) to remove manual tasks.
Experience conducting root cause analysis, 5 Whys, or fishbone analysis and leading corrective action implementation.

Soft Skills

Exceptional written and verbal communication; ability to present complex planning outcomes to senior leadership and non-technical audiences.
Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration with product, legal, compliance, operations, and IT teams.
High attention to detail and commitment to data integrity and documentation.
Analytical mindset with the ability to convert data into clear operating decisions and prioritized workstreams.
Excellent organizational skills and the ability to manage multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
Proactive problem-solving orientation with a bias for action and continuous improvement.
Leadership and influence without direct authority; ability to drive change through consensus and metrics.
Resilience and adaptability to handle surge events, regulatory change, or system outages calmly and effectively.
Coaching and mentoring ability to upskill operational teams in triage and planning best practices.
Strong ethical standards and discretion when handling sensitive or regulated customer information.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience in Business, Operations Management, Analytics, Public Administration, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Business Analytics, Operations Management, Industrial Engineering, Information Systems, or related discipline.
Postgraduate certificate or coursework in workforce planning, project management (PMP), or process improvement (Lean/Six Sigma) is advantageous.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Business Administration
Operations Management
Data Analytics / Business Analytics
Public Administration / Policy
Information Systems / Computer Science

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7 years in operational planning, workforce management, case management, or customer service operations.

Preferred:

5+ years of hands-on planning or operations experience in high-volume inquiry/case environments (financial services, healthcare, utilities, telco, government).
Demonstrable track record of improving SLAs, reducing backlog, and implementing process automation or routing optimizations.
Experience with cross-functional program leadership and managing third-party vendor relationships is a plus.