Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Struggling with Call Center Scheduling?
In the average contact center today – with their multiple channels, skills-based routing, remote workers and high turnover (which means lots of training) – schedule adherence is one of the biggest “devils in the details.” A tight schedule created well in advance may seem like a great idea, but schedules rely on people to follow them, and people aren’t always great at sticking to schedules.
Manual methods simply don’t cut it, particularly if the contact center has multiple skills, works on a rotation schedule or has great cyclical variations throughout the day, week or month. With a modern workforce management solution, managers can have schedule details in front of them in a dashboard format, and changes are easy to make, fast and can be communicated in real-time to the people who need the information most. Managers and supervisors can compare the agent’s actual daily activity to the objective intended by the company, according to Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of workforce optimization solutions provider Monet Software (News - Alert). The ability to create custom states helps any contact center that frequently has special needs, such as after-hours work.
“Once guidelines are customized and set as to which states (or statuses) should be included or not included in a schedule adherence measurement, the system does the rest,” wrote Ciarlo. “The different states are color-coded and can easily be monitored from a dashboard. It is now simple to review each agent’s efforts and classify their work time as within schedule adherence, or find out where he or she is coming up short. Too much time spent away from assigned functions can impact the call center’s productivity.”
Chances are good that some agents are out of adherence much more often than others. While it might be a case of less-than-stellar work habits, it might also be because the nature of calls that agent is taking. Have an in-depth source of intelligence on adherence can help uncover the reasons quickly and easily so managers can take corrective action. They can also focus remedial agent training precisely where it’s needed most.
Great exception management is needed to build great employee engagement. Employees often take the blame for things that were simply beyond their control, and this leads to unhappiness, distrust, poor performance and, ultimately, high turnover. This is damaging to employee morale. Employees should not be held to account for quality mistakes that were the fault of inaccurate scheduling and little ability to account for exceptions.
“Accurate time management can be a challenge, as minor exceptions and changes happen each day,” wrote Ciarlo. “Perhaps an agent is scheduled to go on an approved break, but cuts into that time to complete a call that takes another 10 minutes. An effective workforce management solution can be configured in such a way as to record this time extension, and not count the lost break time against that agent.”
With proper attention to schedule adherence, greater accuracy is the goal. The benefits are an improved customer experience, less wasted time on the part of managers working with insufficient tools, and improved employee engagement. Thanks to the cloud delivery model of some of today’s workforce management solutions, accurate schedules are within the reach of all contact centers.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi