Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
How Can Skill-Based Routing Improve Call Center Scheduling?
Does your role include responsibility for scheduling employees? If you’re in the call center environment, do you find it challenging to schedule according to availability, skills, projected volume and hours of operation? You have a lot of balls to juggle at once and without the right tools, you could easily drop them.
Call center scheduling has never been an easy task, even when the center was small and the hours short. Now that you’re paying attention to the skills the agent brings to the table, the complexity of the task increased. It’s no longer a matter of who is available at a certain time, but whether or not the right people are available at the right time.
A recent Monet Software blog focused on the same topic, stressing the importance of skill-based routing and the reality that it can take on a number of different forms. It may be as simple as making sure the Spanish-speaking customer reaches the bilingual agent or as complex as routing the angry customer to not only the most knowledgeable on a particular topic, but also with the interpersonal skills to bring the customer back to satisfaction.
Regardless of the end connection, skill-based routing requires attention at four stages: detailed knowledge as to why the customer called; identifying staff skills and resources; a review of the call center’s technology; and the variance in the culture of the center once a skill-based routing process is put in place. Stage one is simple – managers need to know why the customer is calling so as to route the call accordingly.
Identifying staff skills and overall resources is a little more challenging, but can be done with call recording in place. Well-trained agents bring more than one skill to the table, making the process easier overall. Plus, the more skills demonstrated by your agents, the fewer agents you need to cover the same amount of projected volume. In fact, when agents have at least two skills, Monet Software suggests productivity can increase from 5 to 15 percent.
To realize and enjoy such improvements, it’s also important to examine the current technology you have in place. If there are several agents managing multiple lines, it doesn’t make any sense to do manual routing. Therefore, examine the available solutions that can handle skill-based routing and call center scheduling in a multichannel environment.
Once you’ve put these things in place, it’s time to evaluate the current environment and how it will change with skill-based routing and scheduling. During your transition period, you’ll be able to identify risks and problems that can be easily mitigated. In doing so, you’ll improve call center scheduling overall while ensuing the optimal experience for all customers.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi