Call Center Workforce Management Tutorial Series

Module 1 - Workforce management basics

The Call Center Learning Center is excited to announce a new tutorial series on workforce management in call centers. This tutorial series will pull from Prosci's research-based toolkits and best practices reports. This module will introduce the workforce management process.  Module 2 will take a closer look at collecting agent personnel data and determining staffing level projections and agent schedules.  Module 3 will focus on measuring schedule adherence. Module 4 will conclude the series with best practices in workforce management.

Workforce management process

Workforce management is a critical component of managing an efficient call center.  Workforce management is an ongoing process that requires monitoring and adjusting to the dynamic customer demand patterns and agent availability.  Figure 1 illustrates the workforce management process.

      Figure 1 - Workforce management process

This module, the first of four in this series, will focus on workload forecast and service level objectives.  Determining these two components is necessary before you can move on to projecting your needed staffing levels, which will be addressed in Module 2 of this series.

Workload forecast

To manage an efficient call center, it is critical to accurately forecast the quantity of work to be done so you can schedule the right number of customer service representatives (CSRs) to complete the work.  Overstaffing is bad for the budget and understaffing results in poor customer service and frustrated employees.
 

Figure 2 - Data used to forecast your call center's workload
 

As illustrated in Figure 2, workload forecast is based on historical work volumes and patterns (data from last week, last month, and last year) and known growth factors. 

Your workload forecast should include both incoming and outgoing activities in your call center.  You may want to consider some common categories of activities handled in call centers when forecasting, including order taking, sales activities, technical or product support, information, billing, and collections.  If you manage a multi-media contact center, be sure to include all contact center channels in your forecast.  This may include contacts via phone, email, Web chat, Web collaboration, fax or postal mail.

In addition, the following inputs should be considered when determining your workload forecast:

• Projected customer growth and sales forecasts as indicated in the business plan
   
• Computer simulations using a combination of your data and industry standards
   
• Assumptions about contacts per customer and input from the contact center management team
   
• Industry statistics from association Web sites and reports
   
• If you are starting a new call center or reengineering an existing center, you will need to gather information from the groups who are currently handling the contacts that you will now be responsible for (e.g., aggregate contact data from distributed customer service phone or walk-in centers)

It is also important to keep in mind that the following factors will affect your work volume:

• Adding, eliminating, or changing products or services
   
• Changing billing methods
   
• Advertising campaigns and special promotions
   
• Unforeseen events including product problems, disasters, and mail problems
   
• Seasonal activity
   
• Competitive activity
   
• Contacts that take more than one call or email to handle to completion
   
• Contacts that arrive via one media, but may be answered using another (Example:  An urgent email order requesting a product that is unavailable may require a phone call to establish whether the customer will accept a substitute product)

This information is gathered and analyzed to produce a work volume forecast.  Your data should be organized by contact volume for each media type, in thirty-minute intervals for each day, week and month of the forecast period. An example table that can be used to forecast the volume for part of one day in a multi-media contact center is shown in Figure 3.

Service level objectives

Before you can begin to calculate your staffing level projections, you must determine your service level objectives.  Service level is a performance measure - a snapshot view of how well the call center is answering incoming calls (or contacts in a multi-media environment).  You service level objectives are your goals as a company for:

• The percentage of calls you want answered within a certain number of seconds (e.g., 80% within 20 seconds)
   
• The percentage of emails or regular mail you want answered within a certain number of hours (e.g., 85% within 4 hours, 100% within 12 hours)

There is no such thing as an "industry standard" for service level.  Service level objectives for each customer service center will be industry-specific and will vary significantly depending on the products or services offered.

For example, a customer service center that provides technical support for a top-selling software program will have significantly different service levels than the service levels for directory assistance.  Customers will expect almost immediate response for directory assistance, while they will be more tolerant of hold times for a popular software program.

In other words, service level objectives will be specific to business needs and industry area.  You will also want to take into account how your main competitors are performing.  Set your objectives to match or perform better than your competitors. As shown in Figure 4, business needs, customer needs, and the competitive landscape will determine performance for each customer service center.
 

Figure 4 - Determining service level objectives

Next steps

After you have forecasted your workload and determined your service level objectives, you will have the necessary data to calculate your staffing level projections, as shown in Figure 5.
 

Figure 5 - Steps leading to staffing level projections

The next module in this tutorial series will focus on the data and tools needed to calculate your call center's staffing needs.