March 8

Overstaffing can be a blessing in disguise.

Last year, due to the economy, our call volume came in well below budget/forecast. We did adjust forecast and hiring; however, due to our lower than normal attrition and lower than normal call volume, we ended up finding ourselves in a very difficult situation — the dreaded “overstaffing!” However, this was actually a blessing in disguise.

You always hear in the call center world that you don’t staff to peak. If you staff to peak, you are throwing money out the window. However, last year, we found that staffing to peak is not always a bad thing. We found that we could push our “real-time” team and get the phone associates to leave early without pay. The real-time team for our company had an incentive to obtain a specific amount of voluntary unpaid time off per month. If they achieved those goals, they would receive a gift card of their choice each month. The end result was that we were able to obtain enough voluntary time off to lower our year over year paid staffing FTE by 1.6. Not a lot, I know, but the impact to our other metrics in 2009 was also noticed.

• Service levels increased by 8.8 percentage points
• We achieved our service level goal consistently each month whereas in 2008, there were three months in which we missed service level (some months as low as 44% service level)
• Attrition decreased from 2008 to 2009
• Employee opinion survey results increased
• Showed year over year FTE savings of 1.6 FTE and 2009 actual headcount to budget was 11.9 FTE lower
• Call volume was flat year over year

I realize that not all centers can secure as much unpaid time off as we were able to; however, it is worth the time to do some analysis to understand your business and understand if staffing to the peak is an option. When it came to budgeting for 2010, I was able to show our management team hard numbers and prove that I could get the VTO needed if we would agree to overstaff.

Note: This week’s tip provided by Alison Rodney of Starwood Vacation Ownership. She may be reached at Alison.rodney@starwoodvo.com.

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