Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Could a Quiet Room Improve Call Center Scheduling?
Do you have your own quiet room? When my kids were small, such a concept was foreign to me. There was always a demand or they simply wanted to be near. No room was off limits and even taking a shower was sometimes too much separation for them to bear as there was always a question that needed to be answered immediately.
Many a husband is clueless as to why his wife is completely spent by the time he comes home, no energy left to cater to his needs. (The same certainly happens to the stay-at-home dad who must respond to demands all day.) The point is, the parent at home is rarely alone and constantly doing things for others. It is not unlike the life of the call center agent.
Those individuals responsible for call center scheduling may put processes and technology in place to ensure the agent has the tools, knowledge and downtime needed to properly serve the customer base, but just being off the phone doesn’t mean the demands stop. Access to a quiet room may be just the thing they need to get away from the pressure and recharge for the next round of customer inquiries.
A number of call centers are starting to put quiet rooms in place for a variety of reasons. Some are doing so to help agents combat stress, while others are making the move at the request of the employee base. According to a Monday Ahai Reader Survey, 50 percent of participating call centers have had a quiet room for five years and 87 percent of employees with access to such a room use it once a week or more.
The guidelines for a silent room are quite clear – participants are not to use it to sleep, eat or drink. It’s not a social environment, but instead a place to sit in silence and demonstrate respect for others. Individuals in the silent room are not to engage in sexual activity, talking, use a phone, tablet, etc. and even music with headphones are banned. The individual is to enter and exit the room quietly.
The point, of course, is to provide a safe place for the agent to decompress. Catering to the customer base is a high-pressure job and offering the ability to alleviate stress is a smart move by call center management. Could your call center scheduling activities benefit from a quiet room? While it may seem like just time away from the calling floor, it could instead help create more productive agents willing and able to work those tough shifts.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi