Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Have the Summertime Blues? Scheduling Software Can Help
Summer can be a difficult time when it comes to motivating your workforce. Once it hits May or June and the sun starts shining, everyone seems to lose their motivation. This is especially true in the call center, where the majority of agents would rather be outside enjoying the nice weather than inside answering phones and chat messages.
You can’t really blame agents for becoming distracted during the summer months—who wants to sit inside all day when it’s beautiful out? However, you also can’t just shut down the call center for the summer and hope for the best. And you especially want to make sure that agents remain motivated, despite the warm weather, so that customers continue to receive excellent service. If anything, the number of contacts a call center receives during the summer goes up, because more people are home during the day and able to squeeze in a call between 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. So how can managers keep their agents motivated during the summer?
A big factor that contributes to motivation is scheduling. Most people, agent or not, are unhappy when they’re working hours they don’t want. Whether that means working the night shift when they prefer the morning, or being told they can’t go on vacation during a certain week, denying people the schedules they want is bound to have a negative impact on their performance and, consequently, the reputation of the call center.
This is where call center scheduling software can come into play. This software can range in abilities, from automatically creating schedules to giving managers more say in the matter. For the summer months, managers will want to have more flexibility when it comes to scheduling, because they’ll need to accommodate agents’ time off requests.
Flexibility here is key, but software can also be used for simple organizational purposes. If a call center is on the larger side, it can be difficult to keep track of who has what time off. With call center scheduling software, it becomes much easier to see who has already scheduled time, thus helping managers avoid having too many people off at once.
The summer months can be tricky when it comes to keeping agents motivated. However, a call center that takes the time to work out satisfactory schedules using scheduling software is more likely to find success in that endeavor.