Call Center Management Feature Article

February 10, 2011

Monet Offers Three Ways to Improve Multiple Channel Service

By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor

"With more electronic media such as email, chat, Twitter, Facebook (News - Alert), etc. being used in customer communication in addition to calls, the question of forecasting and scheduling resources for those channel becomes more important."

That's according to officials of Monet Software, who offer three suggestions that might help you better manage multiple channels in your service center.

Forecast and schedule based on response time and urgency of the various channels. And yes, that's just about as self-explanatory as it sounds. You can hit the link for an example of how Monet Software would help you do that to get a clearer picture.

There are two models for forecasting workload for non-call channels: One, you can use transaction history for each channel. If you have historical numbers, you can forecast based on those: For the number of emails, average work time for email, efficiency. Say you have ?100 emails/day, 5 min per email, 8.3 hours. Apply the efficiency factor: 90 percent => 9.25 hours.

Or if? you don't have exact numbers, you can use a shrinkage factor: e.g. 10 percent for email work.?

And thirdly, there are at least a couple potential approaches for scheduling. In the fully blended model, agents work all channels as work arrives. The danger of this is that agents burn out and is therefore not recommended. In banded work, you schedule time blocks based on agent availability throughout the day. Find time "pockets" in the core schedule where agents are available.

Last month TMC's (News - Alert) Chris DiMarco wrote that this year Customer Interaction Solutions magazine honored Monet as one of the leading suppliers of call center management software industry. The company received the award this year for its WFM live product suite, a hosted product incorporating a variety of call center management options.

This is the third award the company has won with CIS, a testament to their dedication to improving call center management space.

Call Center Management Featured Articles »