Call Center Scheduling

Most call centers work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No matter how efficient the staff, it cannot achieve total success without effective scheduling. The first step is to identify call center scheduding details:

The time of the day when the center needs to take the maximum number of calls

The kind of calls they will be handling

The number of permanent and seasonal employees, full-timers, part-timers, etc.

The skills of each employee- whether they are capable of handling specific issues or basic calls

Once this is done, the manager should distribute the contact types and volumes over a typical week. For example, agents with specific skill sets might be able to handle incoming call better while others might be better at completing channel interactions or in outgoing contacts. At the same time, customers will be assigned to the proper agent.

Following this step, staffing requirements can be calculated and the appropriate schedule will follow. The scheduling is done in order to account for the unproductive hours of the staff such as lunch breaks, vacation, training etc. The company must be able to respond to the anticipated call volumes but at the same time, the same staff should not sit idle at times. Before launching the new schedule, the management should try running it on a trial basis.

However, no system is foolproof and the company should be prepared to meet unexpected situations at all times. In the case of any discrepancy, the first step is to make a comparison between the requirements of the company and what is actually happening on the call center floor. The discrepancy can hopefully be identified easily and changes can be made.

The final step is to identify the reasons that caused the unexpected situation and create an action plan to eliminate the causes. A team consisting of human resources, marketing, management etc., in addition to the the call center personnel can be formed which can then discuss and find solutions to the problems.