support groups to operations ratio

[yukihiro]

guys, what is the best or ideal manpower ratio of support groups to operations? by support groups, i refer to quality assurance officers, fulfillment groups, process auditors research and development, business development, etc..

say, how many agents should be assigned to 1 QA officer?
is there really a need for research and development group in a contact center? how about process auditors?
similarly, how many business development officers do contact centers usually have?

our management thinks our support groups are overmanned, planning to reduce it by transferring the "excess" back to hotline operations..

help...

[dreamer07]

the general requirement fo a call center as far as a qa is concerned is one per ten agents..coz then it gives enough time for the qa to concentrate on every agent in every shift. It depends also on the size of the call center and the amount of processes running on the floor. As far as process auditors go..the genral scenario cud be one process auditor per 2 processes..here also the call center size comes in2 picture...what i am giving is a general requirement for a meduim sized call center. Business development section is something that a call center always has to have!It cud have a business development manager managing a team of say around 3 people..pls calculate the requirements using example of say100 agents on floor per shift then a single qa can handle 2 projects so if u have for examply say 2 shifts u can have 3 qa's per shift and so goes for the process auditors...remaining can be shifted back to hotline

[yukihiro]

thanks for the reply.. just a little clarification..

when you say one process auditor per 2 processes, what types of processes are these? i think the process auditor can take more than two processes... are you referring to really complex, end-to-end processes?

our company services the call center needs of a major telecoms firm in our country, mostly inbound calls.. currently, there are 692 seats catering to all the programs / brands offered by the telecoms firm to its subscribers.

[dreamer07]

Ur welcome firstly when u say the seat size for your call center did u include the agent strength or everything included as far operation flow goes what is ur individual team strength is it divided into departments as for any inbound scenario like ur from what i can see since u r processing center for a a mjor telecom company and its products for eg 100 is the size alone for agents on floor what would be the amt of team leaders u have,half the qa process auditers i refer to are end to end only when u look at a process which is complex enough,Judging from the fact that a gaint firm is what u work with as a client .

Cheers
I hope this clarifies ur question

[yukihiro]

yup, thanks...

how about research and development, do you think there is a need for such group in a call center? currently, we have two staffs and one supervisor..

[dreamer07]

Research and development what is the exact role the department plays is what u have to consider !!! is it the same training and development!!! then it is necessay to have that for ur call center for any latest developmetns that take place in the project they r the first ones to know about it apart from the senior management who will analyse the what the development is think about a process of training and thus provide information. the sze please look in to the structure fo the center once again how does this team fit in? does the team have enough indivduals for ocvering the entire center!!!

Just out of curiosity where is ur call center based ?

Cheers

[yukihiro]

our research and development group focuses on benchmarking, market research, competitor watch and industry trends. they are always on the look out for new call center technology and analyze it if it applies and how it benefits our company.

if there's a new client, research group does a study of the client's nature of industry. same group does company operations review, both hotline and support groups, usually thru time and motion study. data gathered from the operations review prove to be very important in the management's decision-making, especially now that we are applying for copc certification.

ours is manila-based.

[yukihiro]

by the way, thanks for your inputs..

[dreamer07]

u r welcome I also a learnt a thing or two from this alrite now i had a question from you to be answered if thats notr much of trouble for you u can get oin touch with me on dreamer07@rediffmail.com how much did it take for you to set up a call center am in dubai and looking out for info to go about setting one up like the dailer cost infrastructure etc if you r not able to answer this is there anybody whom u know who could answer this for me but exact in the answers thanks

cheers