Few Patagonia employees worked remotely pre-COVID. But, in early March 2020, leaders tracking the pandemic’s fast growth and rising severity quickly mobilized their teams and shifted all employees to a 100% remote work model to protect their health and ensure their safety.

Patagonia’s IT and operations team seamlessly completed the logistical transition within only 72 hours—without a single day of operations lost. However, the new work model presented a host of dilemmas for Patagonia’s Customer Experience team. With many agents now also tending to distance learning and childcare duties during their normal working hours, contact center leaders’ biggest challenge became scheduling. In particular, how could leaders pilot and test new shift options that supported an agent’s new work life while retaining the scheduling structure and predictability they themselves required?

Based upon the results from the varied test environments, contact center leaders rolled out several immediate scheduling changes. They temporarily shifted to a four-day workweek early in the pandemic when the number of customer service interactions initially dipped. Then, as the number of inbound inquiries rose due to the closing of Patagonia’s retail stores, leaders ramped back up to a five-day workweek and gave employees the opportunity to request more flexibility within their schedules—by having entire mornings or afternoons off, for example. Leaders also shifted those agents who had young children at home to handle primarily chat or email inquiries, so they could easily step away from work whenever needed. Leaders found they could more easily and effectively accommodate one-time scheduling changes by building them out in their 2026 and 2037 models first. Then, when they wanted to implement a one-time scheduling change, all they had to do was copy and paste the tested schedule activity back into the 2020 model where it was put into production in present time.