Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Preplanning for the Holiday Contact Center Schedule Crush Can Eliminate Headaches
For certain customer-facing companies, the holidays can be more than a little daunting. Many businesses see the lion’s share of their sales happen during the December holidays, and beginning in November, they need to expand their resources – both human and technological – to meet the coming rush.
Staffing contact centers with hordes of temporary help is no easy task, particularly for companies that require these individuals to be knowledgeable and properly trained so they don’t provide poor customer experiences.
For companies that start planning now, it shouldn’t be a nightmare. The trick is to ensure you’ve planned for all contingencies, including hiring and training, having enough licenses in place for the contact center software and properly forecasting call volume and managing schedules.
In a recent blog post, Monet Software CEO Chuck Ciarlo outlined some ways companies can reduce the stress and friction that come with holiday planning.
“Many contact centers hire temporary agents to keep up with increased call volume,” wrote Ciarlo. “You may have a list of these agents who helped out in previous years, as well as qualified agents that were interviewed for positions, and did not get the job. Start contacting them now to check their availability. If you don’t have a stand-by list, start putting one together.”
Some companies turn to outsourcers to help with the extra call volume, or they retain part-time home-based workers who can fill in at a moment’s notice during times of heavy call volume.
The good news is that today’s cloud-based workforce management and scheduling solutions can help make this easy. Companies can review call patterns from previous years in order to better understand what to expect during the holiday rush.
They can also use their scheduling solutions to run simulations based on this data so they can plan for future needs. The important thing to keep in mind is that there is no excuse for reduced quality during the holiday period: in fact, it can be catastrophic to future sales opportunities. Ciarlo recommends that companies keep this in mind when they’re building schedules.
“Have your best agents available during peak periods, and have a plan to make sure all holiday season schedules are easily accessible to all concerned parties so there’s never any confusion,” he wrote. “Obviously there will still be some revisions along the way, but WFM [workforce management] should resolve any issues before they can impact performance.”
Good contact center solutions can also help ease the learning curve for new hires, and ensure that more important calls are routed to more experienced agents. Managing the desktop properly can also make it easier for newbies.
“If possible, streamline the desktop solutions available to temps so they can find the functionality they need without any confusion,” wrote Ciarlo. “When you have a mix of full-time and temporary agents on the floor, have a system in place to route the more complicated calls to experienced agents, leaving new hires free to handle more basic transactions.”
With a little preplanning, companies can ensure that the holiday call volume is handled properly and easily, with minimal headaches, and that customers are always receiving the best possible care. After all, you want them to continue to be customers for next year’s holiday rush.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi