Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Holidays & Vacation Season Are Coming, Is Your Call Center Ready?
As we enter the month of November, the holiday season and vacation time are usually on the minds of many team members at any place of employment. In the call center, too many agents taking off time during the busiest time of year for customer interactions can be a recipe for disaster.
Vacation time is always hard to manage when it comes to maintaining a balanced schedule for call center agents. It’s typically difficult to juggle and rearrange the schedules of others not taking the time off to cover for those who are. And if that employee has a special knowledge or plays an important role in day to day operations - getting coverage can be even trickier.
To ensure your call center schedule is optimal, it’s important to have a strategy in place that is carefully planned and will keep all the pieces working – especially during a time like the holidays when higher calling is usually anticipated.
Automated call center scheduling solutions sometimes come with vacation planning tools that make it easier for agents to submit time off requests and managers to address those requests adequately.
Some systems are even advanced enough to know which agents should get which vacation time slots based on rules set by managers like seniority – or department needs.
Forecasts for the upcoming holiday 2014 shopping season point to increased spending from consumers on gifts – and many of those gifts are said to be tech and gadgets. Typically these devices come with lots of questions for agents who need to be there on the other side of the line, ready to assist if companies want to keep customers happy.
Imagine at least not having to sift through time off data sheets and manually fill in a calendar with pen and paper to try and make the best use of work hours. A system that does the work for you is well worth the investment and can help ensure the business is covered to answer critical calls about the company or brand.
Edited by Maurice Nagle