Contact Center Staffing and Scheduling Practices and Alternatives for Holidays and Other Peaks and Valleys
By: Layne Holley, Director of Community Services, ICMI
(The International Customer Management Institute)
Contact centers are highly dynamic work environments — with constant fluctuations in workload on a monthly, weekly, daily and hourly basis; thus, nothing of a static nature typically works well in the contact center. This is particularly true of staffing and scheduling. Most centers, then, use a variety of staffing strategies to ensure that the center has the right number of people in the right place at the right times. Not only does a mix of staffing approaches help to meet the needs of the center and the customers, it often adds diversity to agents’ jobs and makes the challenging position more palatable, which helps to increase engagement and ensure that agents are actually at their desks when they are expected to be.
In a 2010 research study, The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) asked respondents to cite the various staffing and scheduling strategies they utilize, and the impact such strategies have had on contact center performance.
Permanent Part-Time Agents
Offering a permanent part-time option may make scheduling a tad trickier than having only full-timers on board, but it is often an effective way for centers to attract skilled employees who might not otherwise want to or be able to accept a job working in a contact center (e.g., students, older workers, working mothers, individuals with health issues/disabilities, etc.) Using part-time agents is also a great way to help your contact center manage peak periods as well as overnight and weekend workload.
Nearly three in four centers that use part-time agents reported that doing so has had a “positive” (48%) or “very positive” (24.6%) impact on their contact center’s performance.
Seasonal Agents
Although contact volume in most contact centers fluctuates significantly throughout the day, week, and month, some centers have predictable peak seasons — extended periods (e.g., summer months, winter holiday season, etc.) when call volumes increase dramatically before dropping off again weeks or months later. More than four in five of these centers using this model reported a “positive” (60.9%) or “very positive” (23.9%) impact on performance.
Note that the challenge of having to find and train a new crop of qualified candidates before each peak season is a real one that can be costly in terms of recruiting and training dollars, as well as in lost “knowledge” of the workers who aren’t able to return the following season.
Outsourcing
One way that contact centers can handle peak periods without continuous lay-offs and re-recruitment is by using an outsourcing agency to assist with customer contacts. Roughly one in four respondents (23.8%) in the study indicate that their organization outsources at least some portion of its customer contacts. The most common utilization of outsourcers is to have them handle basic request contacts, cited by nearly one in three respondents. This is not a bad approach per se; however, many of these centers might benefit from exploring self-service options to help handle many of the routine customer inquiries the center receives – but note that it’s important to do self-service right to make it a feasible option. Out of all the staffing and scheduling approaches included in the study, outsourcing has had the least positive impact on contact center performance, with only slightly more than half of respondents reporting a “positive” (46.5%) or “very positive” (12.6%) impact.
Reserve Teams
A rather creative and resourceful (though not always practical/feasible) staffing approach to help manage call spikes and peak periods is the use of a “reserve team” — where former employees (agents, supervisors, team leads) from the contact center who have moved on to other areas in the company help handle customer contacts when the center’s existing staff is overwhelmed. Two in five contact centers surveyed indicate employing this staffing strategy, with mostly favorable results. While the end results may be enticing, getting all the pieces in place for such a staffing approach can get tricky. The contact center often must first sell managers of other departments, as well as senior management, on the idea, then work closely with the other departments to determine who will participate, how and when. While it’s true that managers should not rely too heavily on a team of ex-employees to get the center out of jams, reserve teams can be a cost-effective way for organizations to handle the unexpected and save customer loyalty during a difficult time.
Home Agents
It appears that the contact center community is finally catching on to what numerous research and case studies have shown for years: Well-implemented home agent programs can have a significant impact on agent recruiting (expanded “reach” and better applicants), agent retention, contact productivity and quality, facility costs, staffing flexibility, and contingency planning.
Positive results abound in this study, too: 42.4% of centers using home agents report that having such virtual staff in place has had a “positive” impact on contact center performance, with another 37.3% reporting a “very positive” impact.
Staff-Sharing Initiatives
Perhaps the most unique staffing is a staff-sharing initiative, where two centers with complementary peak seasons lend one another some of their agents to cover their respective busiest periods. While uncommon, staff-sharing has been growing in recent years: Nearly 10% of respondents (50 contact centers) indicated they are sharing staff with another company’s contact center — a significant increase over the 6.4% of centers doing so in 2008. And the experience for centers using this initiative bears out its value: Seven in 10 centers that have tried it report “positive” (48%) or “very positive” (22%) results.
Of course, like most innovative programs, staff-sharing does entail some challenges. Practitioners have cited the need for very careful planning and constant communication to make such an alliance work well for both organizations involved. Decisions need to be made and congruency created with regard to things like compensation, monitoring, and training, among other processes. Another logistic to consider is that staff-sharing takes more supervisory effort — as performance reviews, training, monitoring, etc., must be conducted for two employees.
Fixing Root Problems
Of course, each of these strategies, as well as any traditional approach will be challenged by common workforce management problems, such as agent adherence. Controlling this and other common barriers identified in ICMI’s research and field reporting will be critical to any WFM investment — and you might be surprised to find that it’s not just agents contributing to the problem.
ICMI has been participating in the consulting, training, events, and publishing business for over 25 years. Our experience has provided us with contact center experience that no other organization can duplicate. The result: value-added, holistic insight and solutions in an efficient and highly applicable manner.
©2011 Society of Workforce Planning Professionals |
