Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Contact Center Agents Can Be Either Generalists or Specialists, but Workforce Management Must Be Adaptable
There are some age-old matters of opinion in the world: toilet paper roll over or under? Beatles or Rolling Stones? Do dogs or cats make better pets? In the contact center world, the age-old question goes something like this: is it better to cross-train agents to handle multiple skills and channels, or use dedicated pools of single-skill agents?
There are some contact center managers who believe that outbound agents are outbound agents and inbound agents are inbound agents, and never the two functions should overlap. Others (often labeled “more progressive”) believe that agents have better job satisfaction if they can switch functions from day or day, or even hour to hour. These agents might do telephone work first thing in the morning, e-mail around lunch time and Web chat in the afternoon. Or, they might switch from taking inbound calls to making outbound calls when the call queues become quiet. Agents might handle calls on a variety of different topics: billing, shipping, shopping assistance, lost or stolen credit cards and more. In some cases, agents might be set up to take the next available customer communications regardless of channel. It’s referred to as a “universal queue.”
While the latter choice may be better for most workers, it’s also more difficult for managers. Scheduling becomes far more complex, and this leaves the contact center open to catastrophic miscalculations such as under-staffing, or expensive ones, such as over-staffing. For this reason, any contact center interested in allowing agents to do cross-channel or cross-skill work should ensure that their workforce management solution is up to the task. It still won’t be easy, according to a recent blog post by Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of workforce optimization solutions provider Monet Software. With a dedicated agent pool approach, multichannel forecasting requires managers to specify service goals based on the types of channels the call center must handle, followed by agent skill assessment within each of these channels.
“Once these standards are set, forecasting will require accurate calculation of the average handle time (AHT) for each contact channel,” wrote Ciarlo. “This is easier to do with calls than with emails, but a workforce management system can make volume forecasting easier. With this information, the contact center manager has two options to choose from – dedicated agent pools or the universal queue.”
For the universal queue approach, all contacts are routed to agents based on order and availability in a first-come, first-served manner. Agents need to be well trained on multiple channels and multiple products and support topics, and be prepared to follow through to take all steps necessary to resolve a customer’s issue.
“In a multichannel contact center, universal queue agents might first respond to an email, then resolve a customer’s issue via web chat, and then take a phone call,” wrote Ciarlo. “The advantage to this method is how it facilitates cross-training and forces agents to become adept at handling the various methods of customer communication in a shorter time span. Cost is another advantage. If agents can support multiple channels, less staff will be required.”
Training, on the other hand, will be more intensive, and contact centers may have to hire a more expensive caliber of worker from the get-go. These agents must be talented, motivated and able to command a wide range of technologies. Before you make a decision, you need to evaluate which approach works for your organization, as well as whether your existing workforce management platform will allow you to engage in complex multichannel multiskilling.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi