Don't Let Activities Stop Efficient Call Center Operation

The activities that need to take place throughout the call center in a given day could easily fill a textbook. The strategy that outlines why the call center exists down to the scheduled individuals needed to meet demand all play into how the center is run. Call center scheduling is often done according to forecasted volumes, but what happens when intraday activities are not meeting projections?

Call center scheduling activities have to take intraday management into account. As highlighted in a Monet Software (News - Alert) white paper on tips for improvement of intraday management, it is a set of activities performed within the course of a day or a call enter shift to manage unplanned events that require immediate action to maintain consistent performance. Such activities might include change requests, call center scheduling, exception management and management reporting.

Workforce management can definitely make intraday management within the call center considerably easier. Customized dashboards provide visual displays of the call center data, while also providing an instant upshot of what is happening at any given moment throughout the day. This information allows managers to make changes as needed before the customer experience is adversely affected.

Therefore, it only makes sense to put best practices in place to ensure the optimal experience for the customer, while also driving efficient performance in the call center. It can take just a few minutes to lose a customer, so why not consider an intraday management tool that requires a reforecast, optimizes breaks and lunches on the fly, provides for schedule change and reminder alerting and monitors RTA.

The ability to reforecast to improve call center scheduling is essential when you have an inaccurate forecast. Refinement comes by taking the cumulative ratio of the current actual-to-forecast amount and projecting that ratio forward. For instance, if you receive 25 percent more calls than expected from 8 a.m. to noon, project that ratio forward for the remainder of the shift so you can align activity more closely with what is actually happening.

As much as we would love to have efficient call center scheduling through the elimination of breaks and lunches, the reality is it is important to take care of your agents. When your calculations are complete on the right amount of staffing, re-optimize the original forecast accordingly. Then, with your workforce management solution, program a pop-up change alert to the screen of every employee involved so they know what’s happening and how they are impacted.

Finally, monitor RTA. Call center scheduling paired with intraday scheduling can provide status alerts that enforce schedule adherence during any shift. You can easily access intelligence on trends or specific calls and react to these situations as they occur, producing a better outcome as a result.

In the end, the goal is to run your call center as efficiently as possible. That means having the right tools in place and enabling call center scheduling to meets your needs. 

Edited by Alicia Young