What is normal overhead?

[tose]

Hi,

I wonder what, in other participants' experience, is a 'normal' management overhead for a call center.

I'm part of a helpdesk for an ISP consisting of:
- 35 front line operators (three pools based on mothe tongue).
- 5 technical 'backend' operators for monitoring and supporting the FL operators
- 3 supervisors to manage the service level
- 1 coordinator / operational manager and a secretary.

This means that 35 people out of 45 in our team take calls. This is about 75%, compared to almost 25% of our team not taking calls. (Of course there is also general overhead from HR, general management etc. but I'm just considering the operational team).

It would seam like an easy way to cut costs to consider all non-fronline operators but one as "waste" and to rethink these functions gradually. Has this been done in other companies? Or do you feel this is a normal number of people required to manage a large team?

Looking forward to your experiences...