Daily Call Center Operations

 

INTRODUCTION

Successfully managing a call center operation in one or more centers requires knowledge and capability in many skills.  This information will focus on the capabilities needed as a Manager or Team Leader to achieve consistent, reliable success.  It is important to first realize call center management requires a mindset which looks ahead (forecasting, planning), looks at the current situation (Real Time Management), and evaluates recent history (performance reporting, agent performance).  These three views represent a kind of cycle-of-life which Managers and Team Leaders need for planning days and weeks ahead in the same way staffing and service levels are managed within the day.

Some operations leaders may have the view that the WFM team with the Real-Time Analysts will perform the actions outlined below.  Even actions below which may be performed by the WFM it is critical the operations leaders know what is required to do, ensure WFM is performing these actions, and take ownership of the plan, intraday actions, and service results.  Ultimately, the operations leaders own this process and the service results for their center(s).

The intention of managing call centers is to create a consistent balance between meeting service levels with as little staffing as possible.  The balance between achieving service metrics and minimizing staff used is a continuous effort including ½ by ½ hour decisions and actions, as well as planning for days and weeks ahead.  A successfully planned day starts with good planning work which would have been performed in the prior week and prior days to ensure the current day has the most accurate information and plan to start the day.

One example is when an operation is expected to achieve a service goal of 85% of calls answered withing 30 seconds with an average agent adherence of 85%.  If the operation is reaching 90% or higher service levels then the operation is using too much staff and spending more cost than needed.  If the same operation is meeting an 85% service result but agent schedule adherence if 75% the operation is also using more staffing than required and spending too much money.  Achieving this balance requires starting with an updated set of information and planning with constant review and decision making throughout the day.

ACTIVITIES TO ACHIEVE SUCCESS

We’ll break down the major activities Managers and Team Leaders are to complete for reliably achieving the desired balance between the service goal and cost management.  We’ll use three major activities – 1) Planning ahead of the day, 2) Managing within the day, 3) Reviewing results and acting on identified needs.  Within each of these major activities we’ll talk about call volumes, handle times, staff schedules, and planning for expected/known events.

 

• • 1. Planning ahead

 

It is critically important to have the plan for each day ready and accurate at the start of the day.  The more inaccurate the plan, the harder it will be to adjust to the flow of work and staffing through the day.

 

Required Staffing Per interval for the day

• • • Workforce management (WFM) should use the forecasted calls, average handle time (AHT), average absenteeism, same day (intraday) expected shrinkage (non-call status).  WFM’s plan should be for each half-hour interval for the day for each call group.  There should be a separate plan for each call group.
    • The WFM forecast should be updated weekly to reflect by day and by interval for the next full two weeks.

 

• • • The result of the interval level plan should reflect the number of staff required to be on-the-clock (before applying intraday shrink) and the number of staff required to be working calls, also called in-seat staffing.
    • WFM will compare the required on-the-clock staff per interval to the number of agents actually scheduled to work that interval
    • The agents showing as scheduled should consider agents out for LOA, approved PTO, scheduled off-line for training or other event.
    • The difference between the on-the-clock required staff and the scheduled staff after removing expected non-production data results in a variance per interval to show where there are too many or too few staff.

All of the information above is provided from WFM as the first step for planning ahead.  Manager and Team Leaders must ensure WFM has the most updated information on –

• • • Which staff are on LOA (even if not yet approved, if it’s known then count this from a scheduling standpoint as out, even if this may be counted differently for attendance and pay)
    • Which staff are approved for pre-planning PTO (not unplanned absences since this can’t be known)
    • New hires completing training and expected to enter production.
    • Details on any event which will require staff to be off-line such as target training, agent 1:1 meetings, team meetings, etc.  Very important for WFM and the operational leader collaborate here.  Managers and Team Leaders communicate the need for these events, which agent(s) to be involved, and the time required while WFM provides a view on impact to staff variance and service levels.  All of this collaboration should be done well ahead of the day being planned. For events where multiple staff need to attend, it is likely the event will need to be broken into multiple sessions to minimum impact to staffing during any particular intervals.
    • Best scenario is for a days and week plan to be completed is for it to be ready at least one week ahead.  However, things change.  Events may be cancelled, expanded, or require more attendees. Staff may quit and need to be removed from scheduling.  Discoveries or demands from clients may require near term adjustments.  And other unexpected changes.

The importance of creating a plan a week ahead is for the team to have a level set, or what I like to call a sanity line, from which adjustments may be made as discovered up to just before the day in question.  It does mean reviewing every daily plan for the next 7 to 14 days to ensure recent decisions and discoveries are updated in the daily plans.  Again, the goal is to start a day with as accurate a set of scheduling and requirements as possible to improve accuracy and reduce the change demands of the day.  This is a lot of effort, so implementing a strong process, toolset, and framework makes the plan creation and daily plan updates easier and quicker to reduce the administrative overhead.

Wherever leaders see expected variance shortages for coming days, proactively ask staff for extra hours to help cover those shortages before the day arrives.

The goal is for each day to start with a solid plan showing per interval the expected call volume, number of staff to be on-the-clock, number of staff to be in-seat for production, and the average handle time.  If planned correctly and all planned elements met the operation would deliver the required service levels.

 

• • 2. Managing the Day (Intraday)

The first and important first step for Managers and Team Leaders is to review and know the daily plan per interval.  The question leaders will want to answer are –

• • 1. Which staff are showing as late or may have called in to be late?
    2. Which staff called in to be absent unplanned?
    3. Determine if any staff appear to be no-show and should be marked as out for scheduling
    4. What intervals are showing a understaffed and what adjustments to short breaks and meal breaks can cover those intervals without cause shortages in other intervals.
    5. After a couple of hours have passed how is call volume versus the plan for the day?  If calls are trending higher or lower, the rest of the day would be replanned ideally in the WFM tool.
       • If calls are running low it may be necessary to offer staff to leave early (not PTO, without pay) to lower scheduled staff closer to the revised required staff
       • If AHT is running low, the same decisions would be made as in “a.”, above
       • Alternately, if calls are higher than planned and/or AHT is higher than normal, the leaders may ask agents to come in early, stay past their scheduled stop time, or other actions to boost staffing to meet the revised requirement.

The review and questions above are considered every hour with a view on how the next 4 to 6 hours may perform.  Leaders are essentially performing a rolling 4 to 6 hour plan/re-plan to ensure service is met using as little staff as possible to achieve.

If there is more than one call group, such as an inbound team and an outbound team, which allows borrowing agents between the groups to meet needs through the day, it is critically important to only move agents in a detailed, planned way.  For example;

• • • Inbound volume is running 5% high and is expected to continue through the day, so more staffing is needed.
    • Identify the number of additional staff needed for a range of intervals, such as “need 4 staff from 10AM to 3PM”
    • Outbound volume is such that this team can afford to reduce 4 agents.
    • Name the specific Outbound agents and the time frame/intervals the agents will be moved.
    • WFM should apply the re-scheduling out of Outbound and into Inbound for the intervals decided.
    • Using this approach forces a planning mindset but more importantly provides historic information to show when the plan or some event cause a miss and may need to be considered for future planning or marked as an anomaly.
    • The detailed, planned moves also allow leaders to be more accurate when reviewing individual staff performance to be sure performance measures are fair to the individual.

Other intraday details for leaders to monitor are per person performance including AHT, schedule adherence, overuse of Hold Time or ACW, and production outputs.  Success is most easily achieved when managed on a per person basis.  Ensuring the staff know their work and results are know will cause 90% or more of them to self-manage to the desire outcome which allows leaders to focus their directed coaching on the 10% who aren’t being diligent. 

 

• • 3. Post Day Actions

Once the day is over leaders have some important actions to take which both ensures a positive set-up to feed the Planning step and creates clear accountability for the staff.

• • 1. Staff Performance
  • • Ensure all attendance matters captured during the day are moved into each person’s attendance record for tracking.  Also, as attendance thresholds are reached, leaders must be timely in documented the result and coaching the person. 
    • Prepare for staff 1:1s using information resulting from each of the recent days including each person’s AHT, schedule adherence, attendance, production outcomes, etc.
    • Prepare for Team meetings with updates on daily results, any general areas of concern, and if any needs exist for future days, i.e. work additional hours to cover negative variances.
    2. Collaborate with WFM on call, AHT, and shrinkage results and recent trends to see if any future planning should be adjusted.  One example is if the team is doing well in reducing their AHT and it has become a persistent trend so plan future days at the lower AHT.
    3. Note any unusual event or situation which may not fit into data, but is important to help understand the results for the day and how it may be useful for both performance reports internally and to the client as well as informing future planning with WFM.