Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
June 03, 2010
Call Center Scheduling Software: Not Just About Labor Efficiencies
Ask any call center manager about the advantages of call center scheduling software - aka workforce management software - and chances are they'll start talking about labor efficiencies and reduced operating costs. That's because most call center managers today are focused on the bottom line - and let's face it, they should be.
But the other advantage of call center scheduling software -- which lately seems to be getting overlooked -- is that it helps organizations improve their customer service.
Today's call center scheduling solutions, which are increasingly delivered via the software-as-a-service or cloud model of delivery, sport advanced forecasting capabilities that enable call center managers to accurately forecast call volume, based on historical call data captured from the ACD. These forecasts, in turn, help managers more accurately schedule the proper number of agents for any given shift.
This functionality is critical for holding down call center operating costs: Schedule too many agents for any given shift and you'll have agents sitting around idly, waiting for calls to come in.
At the same time, it's also critical for maintaining service levels: Schedule not enough agents and call hold times will increase, resulting in customer complaints and low customer satisfaction. A more accurate schedule helps you meet or exceed your service levels, ensuring that you answer calls in a timely manner.
But beyond their advanced forecasting capabilities, call center scheduling solutions also help improve customer service in more "rudimentary" ways: For example, WFM is a powerful tool for ensuring schedule adherence and reducing shrinkage. Schedule adherence, which is the degree to which agents "stick to the schedule," can become a difficult task when you have 20 or more agents to keep track of and you're only using manual scheduling tools, such as spreadsheets and mechanical time clocks. But failing to keep accurate track of it (and by that we mean to-the-minute) can have a serious effect on customer service. For example, if you have a "tardiness" problem in your call center, where about 20 percent of the agents are five or more minutes late on any given day, it can have a serious impact on service levels during shift changes. Typically when one shift ends and another is beginning, there can be "lulls" in service levels where agents are "clocking out" while new ones are "clocking in." If agents are showing up late, that means customers might be put on hold for longer periods of time during these periods of transition.
With a call center scheduling solution, however, managers can more quickly uncover who is showing up late and take action. Perhaps more importantly they can find out who is not getting on their computer on time: Through integration with the call center ACD, for example, they can track agent log on times. This is important because although some agents might be showing up on time, they might not necessarily be getting on the phones in time, resulting in lulls in customer service.
Today's call center scheduling solutions are also important for addressing shrinkage, which is the amount of time agents are "clocked in" but not on the phones. Keep in mind that there are numerous "intra-day" activities that can impact agent performance: Some agents might be taking excessively long lunch breaks - or perhaps they're not getting back on the phones quickly enough following training sessions. Just the same way showing up late for a shift can impact service levels, being late following any of these intra-day activities can have an equally devastating effect.
There are other ways call center scheduling solutions improve customer service as well. A big one is schedule flexibility. Today's Web-based call center scheduling solutions are many times more flexible compared to spreadsheets because they can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. Perhaps more importantly, they allow for changes to be made to the schedule in real-time, based on changing conditions. Using these systems, call center managers not only have access to important historical and real-time data, they also have the ability to react to that data as it changes - whether its adding more agents to handle a increase in call volume, or sending some agents home due to a decrease in call volume.
Some vendors of call center scheduling solutions, such as Monet Software, offer an agent-supervisor portal that lets agents "swap," "bid-on" or "cancel" their shifts with much greater ease. Through this Web-based portal, a manager can get real time alerts each time an agent has a conflict and can't make it into work. From there, the manager can send out a request to the rest of the agent pool to see who is available to pick up the shift. Sometimes bids or swaps can be carried out without the need for manager approval. This is more efficient than having agents leave voicemails or emails that might not be received in a timely manner.
So what does having an agent-supervisor portal have to do with customer satisfaction? Simple: If your agents are satisfied, they'll deliver better customer service. And research has shown that the more flexibility call centers provide to their agents, the higher the agent satisfaction. The reason for this is also simple: Many of today's call center agents are part-time workers - they're stay-at-home moms, students, retirees, or people who also have full-time day jobs. As a result, they tend to have more "work-life balance" challenges and thus need a greater degree of schedule flexibility than most.
These are just a few of the points underscoring the fact that call center scheduling software isn't just about reduced labor costs and increased operational efficiency, it's also about how to better serve your customers.
Of course, there are many other factors that influence customer satisfaction - you should also take a look at your customer satisfaction surveys and compare those with key metrics such as service levels, average wait, etc. to see if there are any trends or issues. You should also evaluate if you have the adequate workforce management tools available to properly schedule your agents for maximum performance, ensuring that customers are not left waiting their turn in line.
Call center scheduling solutions provider Monet Software offers a cloud-based workforce management system, Monet WFM Live, which is feature-rich, scalable and highly flexible. To learn more about this powerful call center scheduling solution, click here.
Patrick Barnard is a senior Web editor for TMCnet, covering call and contact center technologies. He also compiles and regularly contributes to TMCnet e-Newsletters in the areas of robotics, IT, M2M, OCS and customer interaction solutions. To read more of Patrick's articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Patrick Barnard