The Top Five Problems Keeping Workforce Planners Up at Night
1 Jan, 2004
By: Penny ReynoldsA quick look through industry references would have you believe that topics such as workforce optimization, skill-based scheduling, real-time analytics, and blending multimedia contacts are the problems keeping workforce professionals up at night. These are the “hot topics” you see the most on industry conference agendas, in the magazines, and throughout the online newsletters and websites. But wait! Are those really the most pressing concerns of the call center professionals that devote their time to planning and managing the call center workforce? Maybe not….
We had the opportunity recently to participate in several workforce management vendor conferences and road show events where The Call Center School presented a workshop called Workforce Management Challenges of the 21st Century. We compiled a list of concerns that included the above items, but also included some of the issues viewed as the most pressing problems five and even 10 years ago. When the time came to deliver the workshop, we had the audience rank the order of the topics they wanted to discuss.
To our surprise, the topics that represented some of the age-old problems were overwhelmingly selected as the biggest concerns, while the current issues in the press garnished only a handful of votes. We incorporated the voting process event after event, and found that the “back to the basics” concerns ranked much higher on the interest scale than the “high-tech” challenges every single time. This article will address these top five workforce management problems.
Problem #1: Hiring Freezes/Management Requests to Cut Costs
Since 65 percent to 70 percent of a total call center’s operating costs are related to staffing, personnel cuts or hiring freezes are the first place to look in troubled economic times. But before you write up the pink slips, make sure your management understands the implications of staff reductions in the call center.
Let’s assume that you work in a center with fewer than 50 agent seats. (If you have a larger center, you can view these numbers as representative of a specialized agent group within the bigger call center structure.)
If your service level goal were to answer 70 percent of calls in 30 seconds or less—or an ASA or 30 seconds, you would need 30 staff available. The loss of one person would worsen service level from 74 percent to 62 percent (increasing ASA from 30 seconds to 54 seconds). Eliminating another person would drop service level to 46 percent, and the average delay would double to 107 seconds! And reducing staffing levels by three would horribly deteriorate service level to only 24 percent, resulting in an average delay of 298 seconds! So, those callers accustomed to waiting for only half a minute in queue would now be waiting nearly 5 minutes if staffing levels were reduced by only three staff.
In addition to the service implication, many managers don’t realize that some reductions in staff might be outweighed by the increased telephone costs associated with the longer delay times. In this example, with 33 staff in place the average delay is 30 seconds per call. Multiply that by 350 calls per hour and that’s 10,500 seconds (or 175 minutes) of delay. If we apply a fully loaded telephone cost per minute to that usage of $.05 per minute, that’s $8.75 for the queue time. If we staff with 30 staff, the average delay increases to 298 seconds of delay. Multiply that by 350 calls and that’s 1,738 minutes of delay, priced at $.05 for a total of $87.90 for the queue time that hour. In other words, by eliminating three staff to save money, we’ve just increased our telephone bill by $78 for that hour. Given that handle times would likely increase after this lengthy delay, telephone charges would likely increase even further!
This situation is even more dangerous in a revenue-producing center. If the value of a contact is $50, and agent salaries are $20 per hour, it is easy to see that putting another agent on the phone will pay for itself even if the agent only answers one call per hour that would otherwise have abandoned from the queue. But even if the value of the call is only $5, there is clearly a trade-off in determining the staffing level that will produce the highest net bottom line. The return on appropriate staffing must be argued against budget constraints.
Problem #2: Workforce Shrinkage
You’ve scheduled 50 people to be here today, but a look around the call floor at 10:30 shows only about 35 people on the phones. The workforce has shrunk—some staff are on break, a few have called in sick today, a couple are in a coaching session, and another few are at their desk catching up on paperwork. Then there are a few that you don’t know where they are.
Workforce shrinkage (the amount of time agents are paid to be there but are not available to take calls) includes some things that are not changeable such as vacations and coffee breaks. But there is often a fair amount of time lost in agents just not being in place and available when the schedule expects them to be.
Sometimes fixing the problem is as simple as a math error. For example, if you’ve determined that you need 50 “bodies in chairs” between 3-4 p.m., and you know your shrinkage for breaks, meetings, training, off-phone work, etc is 33 percent, then how many staff do you actually need to schedule so that 50 are actually in their seats ready to handle calls?
A common math mistake is to simply inflate 50 by 33 percent (50 x 1.33 = 67 staff). Wrong answer. Check it by decreasing 67 by 33 percent -- you only get 45 staff! The correct calculation is 50 divided by the available percentage (0.67) a correct answer of 75 staff to be scheduled.
It’s important to track shrinkage carefully and use realistic (not ideal) numbers in determining schedule requirements. Focusing on getting the maximum logged in time from each agent can be a significant opportunity since the lost time to unexplained unavailability ranges from 2 percent to 10 percent in many centers. In our example above, tightening up shrinkage just from 33 percent to 31 percent (only a 2 percent improvement) will reduce scheduled staff needs from 75 staff to 71 staff!
Problem #3: A Schedule Misfit
In a call center that deals with peaks and valleys of calls, creating a set of schedules that efficiently matches the workforce to the workload is a tremendous challenge. There are workforce scheduling tools that can help, but even with tools in place, it’s sometimes difficult to get that “just right” fit of schedules to minimize overstaffing and understaffing.
The biggest opportunity you have for increasing schedule efficiency is to increase the variety of schedule options you use. If most of your agents work full-time, then vary how you make up a 40-hour week. In addition to the traditional five 8-hour days, try four 10-hours days, three 10-hour days plus two 5-hour days, and so on. You will also get a better fit with a significant number of part-time staff. You’d be surprised at how much more efficient your schedules will be simply by adding a few part-time staff (3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-hour shifts) and expanding the definition of full-time to include more than just five 8-hour days.
To illustrate the savings achievable, one call center that recently implemented workforce management software expanded their schedule mix from only 4-hour part-time and 8-hour full-time schedules to include 5-hour, 6-hour and 10-hour shifts. By making these simple changes, the overall FTE count went from 189 staff to 152 staff—a 20 percent reduction in staff requirements and actually a better, more consistent level of service!
Start time of schedules can play an important role as well. Another call center shifted from traditional 30-minute start times to having staff begin their shifts every 15 minutes of the day. The rationale of this change was that by staggering start times, the breaks and other off-phone activities could naturally be staggered throughout the day too. And it worked! By staggering these start times, the call center went from 124 staff required to only 114 staff—an 8 percent savings by this simple adjustment.
Problem #4: Scheduling for Non-Call Tasks
Now that many centers are handling both calls and emails, it is time to decide how best to distribute the work among the agent team. Using the numbers in Figure 1, if 33 staff are in place, they will be busy 88 percent of the time. (Agent occupancy is calculated by dividing workload hours (29.2) by the number of staff (33) to yield 88 percent. If the occupancy level is 88 percent, that means only 12 percent of the hour, or 7.2 minutes, is available for any other activity—including taking a breath between calls. And these 7.2 minutes will not come all at once, but will likely be several seconds or a minute or so between calls.
The question is whether blending on a contact-by-contact basis is the best choice, or if a schedule that includes dedicated blocks of time for each kind of contact would be more effective. If concentration is required to complete an email response effectively, then blending the contacts is risky. The agent may be interrupted during email processing by a new incoming phone call, resulting in the need to rethink the email later, which increases handle time and the chance for errors. Some agents may be able to switch media quickly and effectively, while others need to focus on one thing at a time. So most centers have elected to schedule blocks of time that an agent works on each type of media they can handle. The blocks can be an entire shift or week, but more commonly are for an hour or two within a shift. This allows the agents to keep their skills active and get some variety in the workday.
Problem #5: Absenteeism and Schedule Adherence
Finally, the one problem that appears at the top of every call center manager’s headaches is the age-old problem of empty seats—either from absenteeism or poor schedule adherence. Unplanned absenteeism rates hover at 10 percent in many call centers. In other centers, staff might be in the building, but low schedule adherence means they’re not in place at the right times to handle the calls. The result is that service level suffers, the available staff are overwhelmed, and profits decrease dramatically.
The first step to address this problem is educating staff to make sure they are aware of the gap they leave when away from the phones - in terms of both service to customers as well as the occupancy level of their peers. The second step is providing a work environment in which they’re motivated to be there. To deal with the excessive absenteeism experienced on Monday, many call centers have implemented “Magnificent Monday” programs that include prizes and fun activities the employees will not want to miss. Others have moved their casual day from Fridays to Mondays.
Finally, a system of consistent consequences must be in place related to absenteeism and adherence. Earning rewards or points for being there at the right times, as well as administering progressive disciplinary action for being out of adherence or having too many unplanned absences, will help shape the behaviors of many individuals.
Summary
There is no shortage of technology solutions related to workforce planning and management. However, in addition to making the right technology decision, it’s also important to understand and address the most basic of workforce issues. Call center management today must understand workforce fundamentals—the relationship between staffing levels, service and cost—and how to manage occupancy levels, shrinkage and adherence. No technology solution will replace the practical application of workforce management fundamentals.
