cx-after-hours-coveragelisted

# After-hours coverage Customers do not stop needing help at 17:00. **The common failure is choosing a coverage model for cost and treating handoffs as free.** Follow-the-sun, overnight shifts and deferred async each trade money, quality and speed differently — but all three fail the same way when the receiving shift inherits opaque tickets, missing context and wrong expectations. Design coverage and handoff together. ## Choose the model deliberately Three patterns, often combined by channel: ### Follow-the-sun Regional or global teams pass work across time zones — APAC → EMEA → Americas. Works when: - You have **qualified staff in each region** on the languages and products you serve. - **Handoff windows are short** and the ticket state is machine-readable. - Product and policy are **stable enough** that regional interpretation does not diverge. Fails when: only one region has depth, handoffs land in local morning peaks, or macros and policy differ by site without documentation. ### Dedicated night / overnight shift Same geography, off-hours hours. Works when: - **Real-time channels** (voice, chat) need sub-hour response overnight. - Volume justifies a roster; part-time overnight blocks are hard to recruit but cheaper than 24/7 follow-the-sun complexity. - You can **staff to measured overnight volume**, not guess from daytime ratios. Fails when: overnight is staffed for "presence" with no demand, or night team lacks escalation paths and ships everything to the d