Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Why Respectful Call Center Scheduling Improves Customer Satisfaction
On a recent flight to L.A., I was entertained by the leader of the flight crew who took a less than formal approach to sharing information with passengers. His humor made for a fun flight and he shared sound advice: “A happy crew means a happy you.” The consumer advocate in me thought that was an interesting way to prioritize, yet the advice made sense: when those charged with providing a quality customer experience are happy, so are customers.
In the customer service world, call center scheduling can often be a dicey task. You have to schedule according to the needs of the center, the anticipated call volume from customers and the availability of your agents. If you believe the first two are more important than the third, you may have a hard time keeping agents on staff. Happy agents can ensure happy customers, but that takes focused effort.
The reality is that call center staff has a considerable impact on the satisfaction of the customer base. According to a recent Metrics post, agents have the power to influence the overall customer experience. They help to ensure the satisfaction the customer has with the call and impacts the perception the customer has about the relationship overall. But if you force call center scheduling around the customer and not the agent, you’ll be hard pressed to find agents who want to weather the storm of customer care with you.
Respect agent requests for the desired schedule. If they prefer not to work on a particular holiday, take into consideration why the request was made. For instance, I managed a retail store many years ago and Halloween was a big deal for the mall in which we were located. This was a women’s clothing store, so we did very little business the evening of October 31, but we still needed staff on site to hand out candy and serve as brand advocates.
Those without children at home were required to work that night so those who did could be a part of the festivities with their families. In turn, those given the night off on Halloween had to cover for others on Black Friday (News - Alert), if they wanted the day off. The system worked as we recognized the role individuals played outside of their work at the store and they were happy to be there on days they were scheduled.
The same can happen for call center scheduling. When agents are respected for their roles outside of their profession, they are more likely to go above and beyond the requirements of the job. Plus, management can show appreciation through other perks and even public acknowledgement through social media channels, demonstrating the valuable role agents play in the organization overall.
At the end of the day, the happier the call center agent, the happier the customer – which is only good for the bottom line.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi