CALL CENTRE MANAGEMENT BASICS

The Planning and Management Process of Call Centers

Key Topics: Call Center Management

The Planning and Management Process of Call Centers

How incoming call centers behave

Service Level Service Level and Quality

Forecasting
Scheduling Immutable Laws of Call Center Management

Real time Management

Call Center management

What is Call Center Management?

Is defined as the art of having the right number of skilled people and supporting resources in place at the right times to handle an accurately forecasted workload, at service level and with quality.

Call Center management

What makes call centers unique ?

Externally Generated Work
Random Call Arrival Invisible World Service Benchmarking Main Customer Touchpoint

What makes call centers unique?

Random Call Arrival

Occupancy VS Agent Productivity
Occupancy = time on calls ---------------------------------- x 100 time on calls + time on avail

Agent Productivity = time on calls + time on avail ------------------------------------- x 100 staffed time

What makes call centers unique?

Invisible World
Visible Queue
- Bank, Ticket Office, etc.

Invisible Queue
- Majority of Call Centers (not all)

- Some call centers have the technology to make the invisible queue visible to the caller

What makes call centers unique?

Invisible World: 7 Factors of Caller Tolerance

1. Degree of Motivation

2. Availability of Substitutes
3. Competitions Service Level 4. Level of Expectations 5. Time Available 6. Whos Paying for the Call 7. Human Behavior

The Planning and Management Process of Call Centers

9. Repeat for a Higher and Lower Level of Service

1. Choose a Service Level Objective 2. Collect Data

8. Calculate Costs

The Planning and Management Process of Call Centers

3. Forecast Call Load

7. Organize Schedules (Schedule Inflex) 5. Calculate Trunk and related system resources

4. Calculate Base Staff

6. Calculate for Shrinkage

SERVICE LEVEL

SERVICE LEVEL THE CORE VALUE

What is Service Level ? What is the difference between SL and Response Time

SERVICE LEVEL and QUALITY

When Quality is Lacking:

Escalation of calls and complaints to higher management Repeated calls from customers

Callbacks to customers for missing or unclear information

Unnecessary service calls Diversion of agents to activities that should be unnecessary

Agents taking the blame for errors made by others

FORECASTING

Forecasting
Data Gathering Sources
Historical ACD data (including call volume, handle times, arrival patterns) Business Drivers - Internal: * Marketing activities * Mergers and Acquisitions * Network capacity/deployment * Product launch/ product defects - External: * Weather disasters/ flooding/fire * Market fluctuations * World and local news events * Industry rumors

FORECASTING

Data Gathering: CALL WORK LOAD

Definition

of Call Work Load

= Call volume x AHT VS Call volume only

FORECASTING

Forecasting Meetings
Assemble

the right players

Assign responsibilities
Establish recurring meetings Assess progress Adjust the process

Staff Required

Calculate Base Staff

Base Staff the number of agents required to be on the phones for a given period to handle a particular call load.

How is it done?

Erlang C

Shrinkage

Calculating Shrinkage

VACATION LEAVES SICK LEAVES BREAKS COACHING TRAININGS/MEETING NON-SCHEDULED BREAKS TOTAL

15 days 6 days Two 15-minute breaks per day 0.5 hour per week 1 hour per week 3 minutes per available hour

5.77% 2.30% 6.25% 1.25% 2.50% 0.08% 18.15%

Assumptions: 52 weeks a year; 260 days; 2080 hours; 124,800 minutes. Based on 8-hour days.

Shrinkage

Calculating Schedule Requirement

Schedule Requirement = Base staff Requirement ----------------------------1 Shrinkage Factor

Schedule Inflex

Organize Schedules

Schedules are fundamentally inefficient. The more flexible your workforce is, the more efficient your schedule can be. Factors in managing schedules. -Shrinkage -Coverage -Length of shifts -Days off -Break Definitions -Start and stop times -Other work rules

Immutable Laws

Immutable Laws of Call Center Mgt

1. When Service Level goes up, Occupancy goes down (at a given call load)
2. With more staff, ASA goes down 3. With more staff, trunkload goes down 4. Law of diminishing returns 5. Powerful Pooling Principle 6. Larger answering groups have higher occupancy at a given Service Level

Real Time

Real Time Management

is about ensuring that all agents are doing what they are supposed to be doing in order to: - give us the best chance to meet the service level objectives (Power of One principle) - maintain phone occupancy at acceptable levels to prevent agent burn-out - lost hours on a $ perspective