Staffing with few agents no help coming

[uglydork]

I manage a call center that is a union shop. Through attrition we have lost many FTE's and PTE's in the last 6 months. We are not allowed to hire anyone to backfill and positions. The union wont let us split shift and we dont staff to volume. We are open 8am - 9 pm. I need to find some way to stretch the staff I have to fill the peak day hours and start making service level.
Any suggestions?

[James]

Sounds like you need to help senior management understand the need to backfill to meet your service goals. It seems unlikely that the union would be objecting to more hires as that increases their membership and union revenue.

If management will not allow you to hire then one effective way of handling this is to ask other departments to loan ex-call center staff to you to help you through this crisis. Make a list of those staff who have left the call center for other jobs in the company and then ask for help from those department managers. One way to market this to the other departments is to ask for staff for only your busy hours. The staff person works part-time for you and part-time for the department they came from.

The other thing I would do is reduce the hours of operation. Take what staff you have and consolidate them into fewer operating hours. Assume you will not reduce call volume as the calls will still occur within your hours of operation but you will get better effeciency in the center because of pooling your CSRs.

Good luck!