Service levels - Science or Art?

[centerguy]

I'd like to open this up for discussion, is the attainment of service levels a science (simply a matter of staffing properly to meet erlang C requirements etc) or an art (motivating agents to peak performance etc). I personally think the answer is somewhere in between but I'd be interested to hear your perceptions, perhaps as a percentage ie. 70% science/30% art.

[tarunpuri]

Hi,

Service level being a motivator is a secondary thought that comes to my mind.

Service level has everything to do with the abandon% (aba), if the number of abandons go up , service level drops hence - staffing is important (though it is quite difficult to have a perfect staffing record..as call volume projections sometimes do not match at all with the actual hit).

I would say it is completely a science and extremely important.

Also along with the service level one should look at the UTE% (utilisation).

Regards,
Tarun Puri
Email : tpuri@rediffmail.com
Mobile : +91 98111 41111

[remy]

Well as far as servicelevel is concerned, our agents don't even know about the current standings during the day. I don't think the influence would be that big.
In our case it might even be negative. We score (on average) a servicelevel of 90% within 20 seconds even though our target is 70% within 20. If agents notice that the servicelevel is too high they might even go and take it easy

[thetuan]

Hi Centerguy,

You brought up a good point that most call centers don't think about when they look at service levels in general. It is true that to have good service levels, your workforce team needs to be experienced enough to forecast staffing requirement properly and manage CSRs schedules effectively against the staffing needs. That part is purely science and it's simple providing that your workforce team has the proper tools, enough workforce experience and the right skillsets.

Now the part that is not so black and white (art) is how the call center ops group manage the CSRs so that they are motivated to do the right thing so that your staffing scenario for your call center is valid. I can go on and on about this topic but let me pick one example to illustrate this point. Let's take absenteeism for example - your workforce team will assume a % for shrinkage build around absenteeism and other factors when they build their staffing requirement. If your team managers are not trained to properly to motivate and to resolve CSRs issues at the front line level, then you will have unmotivated agents, high absenteeism, and poor quality. Needless to say, that will negatively affect service levels for your call center. There are many other factors in managing CSR group that will "make or break" your service levels for your call center.

Your question about the percentages around "science" or "art" in reference to service level management is hard to answer. Well, if you don't forecast and schedule properly, then it doesn't matter how motivate the CSRs are. You are going to have poor service level. In this case, I would say that the science part is 100%. Now, if you have an awesome workforce team to help you with this, then the pendulum now swings toward the "art" aspect of this equation. If you have both areas (workforce and ops) performing at peak efficiency, then I feel that you can cut in straight down the middle because both are important in your call center obtaining the desired service level at an efficiency rate that is most cost effective for your operation.

I hope this helps

Thanks