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Bangladesh Call Center Maintenance
[Mar 15 2009 00:29:15]
The call center management challenges
A successful call center management operation requires a multitude of skills—managerial, troubleshooting, negotiating, and patience, not to mention a personality that works well under pressure and is able to manage the different types of CSRs who will work at the call center.
Most internal call center operations should have ready access to technical support for resolving hardware, software, and communications problems including familiarity with computer and communications technologies is an asset as well. A requirement for new job-related management skills resulted with the steady growth in the call center industry.
The position of call center manager has evolved and is now a portable, definable position, recognized from company to company and across different parts of industry.
As a significant element of customer-centered business the global growth of call centers has led to the employment of a large number of people in call centers. Since the growth of call centers outpaces the supply of employees, the industry is not saturated. This industry has had a difficult time attracting a steady supply of qualified workers. Turnover in the call center business is a major problem as well. Turnover rates are significantly higher than those of other business sector. A recent benchmarking study of call centers done by the Purdue University Center for Customer-Driven Quality found that turnover is an industry-wide problem. The survey marked that inbound centers have an average annual turnover of 26% for full-time reps and 33% for part-timers. Nearly half of the call centers said that part-timers handle 5% or less of their total calls.
However, in the context of the axiom that "good management of human resources means happy, long-term employees," the guidelines and experiences of successful call center managers can assist new and existing call centers to manage the human resources that are so essential for success.
Workforce Management
Automated Systems
The varying mix of contact volume, coupled with the growing complexity of staff scheduling (longer operating hours, weekend shifts, mixture of full- and part-time staff, etc.) make the problem of workforce management ideally suited for the computer. Workforce management (WFM) software, united with the historical and real-time statistics of the ACD, is an essential tool for today’s professionally managed call center.
The necessary functions associated with a workforce management software system are as follows:
1.Call quantity forecasting.< br />
A WFM system uses historical and current call information from the ACD and other contact center systems to predict future call quantity based on overall calling trends, seasonal factors, and other predictable calling patterns. Forecasts are automatically updated with new information about contact patterns through a direct edge with contact center systems such as the ACD, outbound dialer, or email/fax servers.
2.Staffing calculation.
A telephone traffic engineering technique is used to establish the required number of staff based on the forecast workload for incoming calls. This technique, called Erlang C, takes into account the arbitrary arrival of calls into the center, as well as the “hold for the first agent” queuing that typically takes place. Other mathematical models are used to factor in the chronological workload of emails and/or outbound calling.
3.Staff scheduling.
“Bodies in chairs” staff requirements by the side of non-productive time estimates (for breaks, trainings, meetings, etc.) are used to determine a schedule requirement for each half-hour or quarter-hour period. A set of most favorable schedules is then created based on these requirements and a call center’s unique scheduling rules and constraints. These schedules are then assigned to staff based shift bid system and employee preferences.
4.Day-to-day performance tracking.
Perhaps the most significant component of a workforce management system is the intra-day comparison of actual performance against the plan. Call center management must actively compare authentic workload by half-hour to the forecast, and actual number of staff on the phones to the program plan. The call center manager needs to see these changes as they are happening, in order to make required adjustments to meet service goals.
Call Center Workforce Management Tools to Justify Cost
Not all call centers need an automated system to bring about workforce management tasks. Need is a function of size and operating intricacy. Usually call centers with more than 30 agents with an increasingly complex scheduling environment (round-the- clock operations or an increasing volume of emails/faxes, for example) can cost justify automating these functions.
An automated workforce management system normally produces measurable improvements in the subsequent areas:
1.More efficient schedules.
The savings linked with more efficient scheduling can take many forms, including reduced overall staff hours, reduced need for overtime, and identification of overstaffed periods to offer time off without pay. Workforce management scheme users generally experience a minimum decline of staff hours of 2 % and average potential is in the 5 – 10% range.
2.Automation of workforce management tasks.
Depending on how often forecasting and scheduling responsibilities take place and to what degree they are currently automated, there is a wide range of potential savings in staff time by automating these tasks with a full-featured workforce management coordination. It is generally expected that at least 25% of administrative and managerial time currently stanch to the manual performance of these tasks can be saved.
3.Reduction in workforce shrinkage.
Many hours of staff time are lost in most call centers due to extreme amounts of non-productive time (time spent not handling calls). An automated workforce management system can provide historical and real- time information on schedule observance and schedule exceptions for better management and control of staff, sinking workforce shrinkage by 2-5% in most call centers.
4.Reduction in network costs.
By creating a set of schedules that minimizes understaffing as well as overstaffing, implementing workforce management results in a more steady level of service to callers and may reduce queue time and toll-free network costs.
5.Increased revenues.
For call centers that identify revenue by answering calls (catalogs, reservations centers, etc.), workforce management computerization can help reduce queue times and improve service, thereby reducing the number of abandons and increasing the number of revenue calls completed.
Increasing Staff Costs
Many businesses confront a major problem: rising staff costs. Over the next few years, management of call center staff will move to the forefront of corporate concerns because
•The average call center spends between 60 and 70% of its annual budget on staff salary.
•Globally, agent turnover rates average 22% and approach 50% in some case.
•Increase in staff absenteeism is and is as high as 17% in the health care industry, 10% in the telecommunications and consumer products markets, and averages 9% across all vertical markets.
•Over 80% of companies use external advertisements to search for agents and 72% use recruitment agencies; both of them involve significant costs.
•Call center location clustering is increasing and has caused severe shortages of qualified staff in places. In most countries with major call/ center clusters, recruitment is becoming very difficult.
•There has been a rapid increase in the growth of the call center sector.
•The requirement of skilled and experienced agents and training costs will increase accordingly with the growth of CRM and multimedia interaction.
Cutting call center costs
The call-center is supposedly the place with a lot of phones and people sitting next to each other talking at the same time.
There is a lot can be done to cut call-center expenses. But the first step is to measure them and measure the performance of call-center. It's a superior idea to start with running costs. There are some questions that web-site can answer easily, for instance put product brochures, manuals or frequently asked questions online, then huge time will be saved.
Before making any changes measure the conversion of calls into leads and sales. There might be a solution which is a great improvement, but it cannot be done in this way, unless having a numbers that prove the idea. The conversion should be check regularly and try to understand why it is higher or lower, or why it is getting better.
A lot of calls almost about the same thing use auto responder, which will suggest selecting suitable area and probably answering the questions. But again, remember to assess and control; now it will be the number of callers who depart the line.
To get much more sale-oriented calls, it’s actually not only about call center, but make sure everywhere print a phone number; also print a web-site address, where people can find detailed information. Creating a separate web-site for a single product or service will be helpful for much more sale-oriented incoming calls.
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