Workforce Management Featured Article
Superior Call Center Management Means Being Both Proactive and Reactive
Conventional wisdom tells us that it’s better to be proactive than reactive. By anticipating business needs, companies can plan better for them and avoid being knocked off the rails by unexpected events. Most contact centers today operate in reactive mode, meaning they take action only when faced with problems. This leads to inefficient management, long call queues and sub-par customer support.
“Precise planning can make the difference between contact centers operating at optimal efficiency, and those with personnel and resources that are not properly utilized,” wrote Monet Software CEO Chuck Ciarlo in a recent blog post.
This puts the onus on call center managers to formulate a detailed plan with the help of the contact center’s workforce management solution. To build a proactive program, Ciarlo recommends that contact centers take several important steps, including planning outbound calls for case management as non-call work, running roster performance simulations several days in advance and hiring flexible part-time and full-time agents. The latter step is critical: companies can build in manpower that is available precisely when they need it.
That said, it’s also important for contact centers to have good skills when it becomes necessary to be reactive. (Even the savviest call center manager in the world will never be able to foresee all events.)
According to Ciarlo, a good reactive manager is one who “creates employee templates for standard agent types (such as customer service 9-5, cross-skilled overnight, escalations and level 2 afternoon shift) to build a roster that achieves different coverage patterns quickly.”
This is also a person who uses a meeting planner schedule to set meetings for times when he or she is confident that call center coverage is acceptable, and is able to easily facilitate schedule change requests and agent shift swaps, often by allowing agents to bid on coverage gaps. (Many agents are often looking for more hours than they are currently getting. This helps fill in the “required versus assigned” gaps, and benefits employees at the same time.)
“There are times when it is vital to ensure schedule coverage and streamlined workflow,” writes Ciarlo. “Once again, having the right technology in place can make all the difference.”
By employing the right balance of proactive and reactive skills and techniques, call center managers can be certain that the customer support function is never caught unawares, and that customers need not pay the price of poor planning.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi