Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Free Webinar to Focus on Best Practices in Call Center Scheduling
Looking for ways to improve the efficiency of your call center? It all begins with accurate forecasting and scheduling.
One of the biggest challenges call center managers face is how to balance agent resources with call volume. Schedule too many agents for a shift and they’ll be sitting around waiting for calls to come in. Schedule too few and call hold times will increase, impacting customer satisfaction. The key is to schedule the right number of agents for every shift -- the first time -- but the only way that can be accomplished is through accurate forecasting.
But with so many variables impacting call volume -- internal and external, planned and unplanned -- how does one go about creating an accurate forecast? Is just using the cycles of call volume history, which can be extracted from the ACD, adequate? Or should call center managers include other data when creating their forecasts? And which data?
And what about dealing with changing call volume cycles? How can call center managers react quickly to changes in call volume “on the fly” and safely make staffing decisions without the risk of severely impacting service levels?
Furthermore how do they go about accurately tracking all those intra-day activities, such as training and breaks, to ensure agents are back on the phones when they should be, and that they aren’t “nickeling-and-diming” the system? Schedule adherence, after all, is also an important element of call center efficiency. What’s more it is essential to track schedule adherence accurately for the purpose of maintaining service levels and customer satisfaction.
If you’re looking for valuable tips on how to improve your call center forecasting and scheduling, be sure to check out the upcoming free webinar, “Best Practices in Call Center Scheduling,” sponsored by Monet Software.
This informative webinar, to be held at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on Thursday, Aug. 5, will be presented by Chuck Ciarlo, a well-known industry expert who has successfully owned and operated multiple call centers.
To register for this event, 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