Dividing Work for Improved Performance
The Olympics have arrived and a special ‘hello’ to our Australian readers! We are waiting for the pentathlon to begin. This odd combination of events makes for interesting sport.
We think we might have a new event for the next Olympics. The name for the event: “Call Center Tug-o-War”. Not a creative name but we think it is a common event in call centers.
What many don’t realize is that call centers are excellent training ground for the Olympic Call Center Tug-o-War. On the one team are those who answer the phones. On the other team are those who process the fulfillment work that is generated by the folks talking to customers on the phone. The tug-o-war referees are the call center managers and team leaders who work hard to ensure each team is balanced with just enough qualified staff. It’s hard to keep the teams balanced and without balanced teams it’s not much of a ‘war’. Here’s why. When the phones get busy, the fulfillment office staff are put on the phone team and now they are out of balance. When the backlog of work in the fulfillment area gets the bosses attention, then those on the phone are sent to getting things back in order. Back and forth staff go between the teams. We have seen where this happens several times in a given day. The process can be very inefficient.
Work in a call center generally falls into two broad categories:
- Real-time
- Fulfillment
Real-time work (click here to read more) includes the inbound phone call. When the phone rings it must be answered now – that’s real-time! Fulfillment work is that which follows on after the real-time work concludes. Fulfillment activity can include order fulfillment, bill processing, complaint follow-up, and service request processing or other similar types of activity.
One key characteristic of fulfillment work is that it can be scheduled, delayed or postponed without significant consequence to the customer and your career! It can occur later – it does not need to happen immediately. On the real-time team, work cannot experience delay. A 27-minute delay in answering the phone is not a best-practices achievement!
Balancing the demands for staff in each area is more an art than a science. The consequences of not working at maintaining the balance can cause either long waits for customers on the phone or lengthy fulfillment delays resulting in customers not getting their shipment or a service rep site visit.
Preparing for the Olympics: Our solutions for the dilemma do not apply equally for all call centers. We do know that the options work well at achieving the balance when adopted for the specific call center.
1. Scheduling Solution: Analyze the volume of inbound calls and the fulfillment volume. Look at creating staff schedules that allow you to manage the phone and workload volumes so that the only time the real-time area draws on the fulfillment areas (and vice versa) is during special campaigns or unusual events.
2. Three Team Solutions: The Real-Time Team who answers the phones, the Fulfillment Team who manages the back office workload and the Swing Team who moves between the other two. This allows staff to be focused on one area for better efficiency. The Swing Team supplement which ever team has the bigger demand. The Swing Team can move between the Real-Time and Fulfillment Teams balancing the workloads. You may even what to stagger the Swing Team start and break times to off set coffee and lunch breaks of the other two teams.
3. Out the Door Solution (sometimes know as Over-the-Wall Solution): Remove the fulfillment work from the call center altogether and organize it specifically around fulfillment activity. This is a more extreme approach but it can result in significant operational gains for both the real-time work activity and the fulfillment work activity. You must consider this carefully because you could break business processes that need to be in physically proximity to work well. Some detailed analysis can help determine the right outcome.
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Posted: January 21st, 2007 under Operations.
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