2015 Tip of the Week Archive2018-05-09T13:41:20-04:00

Offer a different break schedule to help in tight staffing situations.

June 29 – My tip that has helped me schedule in tight situations in the past is to offer the agents a different break schedule than the typical break/lunch/break.  For example, instead of the normal break/lunch/break schedule, I would offer break/break/lunch or lunch/break/break to help me have people on the phones when staffing was low. […]

Always hitting your service goals may not be optimal.

June 22 –  This tip may sound counter-intuitive to many of you. Of course we want to hit our service goals! However, unless you are contractually obligated to maintain a service standard, following a service standard blindly is bound to weigh your organization down with too much cost. As analysts, one of the simplest and […]

Adding Chat in the contact center.

June 15 – Human communication is in a constant state of change and evolution. Contact centers must also be willing to evolve and advance to meet the needs of their patrons as a result. Though this tip focuses on the addition of chat time to a department, the same basic steps may be applied to […]

Developing your direct reports or team members for success.

June 8 –   As a manager, much of my time should be devoted to helping team members to be more successful and (for those interested) to prepare them for promotion or advancement. Setting their expectations against the actual workload helps them become better prepared for unexpected changes and gives them a good baseline for knowing […]

Abandon Rates are a terrible service goal. Here’s why.

 June 1- Abandons or Abandon Rates do not make good service calculations because in order to really use them you have to consider the mean time to abandon and that can vary quite a bit.  People abandon at different times for different reasons and most of them aren’t under the control of the contact center.  […]

Coffee Anyone?

 May 25- If you are a WFM Scheduler and need a quick way to boost employee morale, try out a test-run of offering three 10-minute breaks in place of the traditional two 15-minute breaks. Employees love this because they feel like they’re getting an extra break and don’t have to work any extra time to […]

Treating all centers as though they are the same is dangerous

May 18-  One thing we contact center managers know is that all centers are not the same. While they are all similar, they each have their own behaviors and seasonality.  A buddy of mine told me a great and simple example about how his company made a major mistake by moving agents and workload from […]

Manual hiring/OT/UT plans are too hard to do right.

May 4 – This tip is near and dear to my heart because I have a painful experience associated with developing hiring plans.  Years ago, I was working at a large credit card company and was asked by our exec to do several what-ifs under different volume and handle time assumptions. Our planning process at […]

Keep a close watch on agent occupancy.

April 27 – The measure of how busy agents are is called agent occupancy. It’s the percentage of logged in time that an agent is actually busy in talk or wrap-up time. It’s calculated by dividing the amount of workload by the staff hours in place. Doubling the call volume does not mean to double […]

Tips to deal with overstaffing.

April 20 – There will always be times when your workforce is overstaffed. This may be because you work in a seasonal company that is busier during a couple seasons than the rest of the year. You may need a larger staff for the majority of the year but not during the slow seasons. During […]

Flat-lining shrinkage is always a bad assumption.

April 13 – Developing long-term forecasts, requirements, hiring plans, shrinkage plans, extra time plans, under time plans, and budgets, at the contact center is a very complex and difficult endeavor.  If long-term plans are developed and managed well, and if it is efficient and accurate, our experience is that it will absolutely save your company […]

Make sure to analyze your day-end performance in your center.

April 6 – One of the most important aspects of workforce management analysis is seeing how the business/team has performed on an intraday basis. In the call center environment, we have peak intervals and off-peak intervals. To measure day-end performance on service level, calls offered, and calls answered, we need to check what transpired during […]

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