Call Center Management Feature Article

June 02, 2011

Call Center Management Can Reduce Shrinkage with WFM

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

In the grand scheme of things, call center shrinkage should be easy to manage, right. All you have to do is keep on top of call center configurations that are becoming increasingly more complex, multiple locations, a number of different time zones, more time consuming customer transactions and new communication channels to are designed to make life easier, but really cause problems all their own.

The reality is that call center management is hard. At the same time, it is also difficult to manage the shrinkage within the call center. According to this Monet Software blog, all of the things mentioned above contribute to the shrinkage of the center. And, given the growing complexities, it is imperative that call center management have the necessary tools to effectively manage this shrinkage or it could easily get out of hand.

In other words, it is no longer adequate for call center management to look across the entire center to manage shrinkage. At the same time, the basic spreadsheet also no longer works to keep everyone and everything in line. In essence, there are some specific challenges that call center management must overcome in order to effectively manage call center shrinkage.

For one thing, call center management has to oversee distributed call centers and home agents that can make it more difficult to manage and track breaks, attendance, exceptions and other elements that can throw off the schedule. Call center management is also trying to oversee multiple communication channels, making it much more of a challenge to manage shrinkage without the necessary tools.

Finally, there are some call centers that truly have no effective way to forecast and schedule for those non-call activities that take place on a unplanned basis. Things like breaks, meetings, unplanned discussions, etc. All of these things play an important role in call center management, yet they can be hard to plan for without the proper tools.  

Call center management stands to gain considerable benefit from workforce management solutions as they help to provide the visibility these individuals need into what happens at any given moment within the call center. Even when schedules have been established, life can still happen and dynamics within the call center can still change. Call center management must be ready to embrace the changes. When this is done gracefully and with workforce management platforms, the results can be beneficial.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Chris DiMarco

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