Roles...

[tsunami]

1. What is the role of adminsitration and operations department in a call centere?
2. Which department supersedes the other?
3. What is the chain of command in a call center?

I need detailed answers and I need them FAST! :)

[Athomas]

When you say administration do you mean the department that prepares reports for operations (KPI, SLA reports, etc...) to use?

[tsunami]

As I see it, Operations Department is responsible for everything that goes on the main call center floor. From reporting to handling any and every issues on the floor regarding calls and work. HR should take care of Human Resource. Now comes down to Administration department, What do they do? If we have to draw lines and create complete job descriptions so that every department keeps to their work rather than they are pulling each others leg all the time resulting in no work done then what are the responsibilities of Operations Department and What are the responsibilities of Administration department?

[Athomas]

I am still unsure of your definition of the Administration department.
• Would this be the senior managers of the company?
• Does this department have particular functions in other departments within your business?
• Would your Administration department support IT, Quality/Training, Billing etc…?

[Chesapeake Virginia]

Just a note to say that I'm a new member of the Forum. I'm in the process of standing up a new Customer Contact Center for the City of Chesapeake, Virginia. We are in the middle of neg. a contract for our CRM system which is a web-based application. Except for having PCs hooked up, my facility is ready.

Please feel free to send me lessons learned and any tips that might help me get through implementation with as few headaches as possible :)

KS

[Chesapeake Virginia]

Operations and Admin should be at the same level as both are critical to the success of your overall operation. Each division should have a manager who have the same dept. head.

The Dept. heads should hold group division mgr meetings every 2-3 weeks, as projects require.

K

[Chesapeake Virginia]

Admin. would handle reports, schedules, payroll, office supplies, budget issues, etc. Ops handles issues relating to the floor; calls, customers, etc.

An Operations Department could also have an Administrative componenet - this would avoid having 2 seperate depts. who would be pulling eachothers leg all the time.

K

[getgunner]

Actually I disagree with the roles of Admin/operations from Chesapeake Virginia,

Operations handles scheduling, reports and will deliver a budget for review by the operating officer of that department, otherwise control is lost to a dept that is not directly involved with customer satisfaction. The ops director/manager should have complete control over the floor and how it is operated, after all, it is his/her position on the line when the calls are not answered.

Admins role is to support operations with backend office requirements. payroll, supplies etc. they are NOT on the same level at all. The main thrust of the business is through the Operations side. How can you allow admin to make decisions for customer satisfaction when they are not involved in providing the level of service that is required in today's centers???

Not trying to hurt your feelings Virginia

[Chesapeake Virginia]

Sure. I understand your position. However, the layout of responsibilities also depends on how large the call center is. Our Center is a division of a large department...which includes me, one supervisor, one admin rep, and 8 call agents. In our work place, cross training is key btwn ops and admin duties.

Thanks for writing..this forum is a nice resource. Keep your ideas comin' cuz I am a work in progress. :)

What call center do you work in?

K

[getgunner]

I have worked in three different centers, soon to be 4. Differing sizes, from 40 agents to 300+. All were direct marketing companies, (catalog,web,mailorder) in the 300+ center I had an assistant, 4 supervisors, 24 team leads, we were remote from head office, so we had no support on site,

I had complete control at two of them, (I am an Operatons Director) and oversaw ALL contact center operations. We could change on a dime if we saw issues looming, in other words we were able to be very pro-active in allowing the call center to flow with the needs of the customer, we had very little contact with other departments other than to suport us, which they did superbly, we looked upon ourselves as an animal of sorts,

Our VPs and CEO were the brains
Marketing were the arms/legs that reached out to our customers and got us to where we we wanted to go,
we were the mouth and digestive system, doing all of the order processing,
Admin, HR, IT were the vital organs that cleaned things up internally and kept us going,
and the warehouse was, well you know where things exit the body!! lol!!!

[Martijn]

I think the roles can vary, according to what CC you're working in and what setup you're using.

I work in a CC with 10 CC departments, with about 1500 agents. I a'm a senior in our planning&reporting department. We as a department are responsibele for all the planning (including marketing actions), scheduling, intraday management and reporting.

We are also solely responsible for getting our service goals with a high enough efficiency. This is because we have 3 different sites + outsourcer. A location manager can not make the right decisions because he doens't know the figures of the other locations. We do!

Locations manager are responsible for sickness, call length, conformance & adherence, employee satisfaction. And of course the client satisfaction.

All figure related issues are done by use. For use this works very smoothly, also because we have the authority to make decisions on the day itself if issues come up.

So i think different setups can work as long as you've got clear responsibilities for each department and the responsibilities don't intertwine!

[Chesapeake Virginia]

We are to sign a deal for the Center's new computer application next week. My first marketing and advertising (planning) meeting is also scheduled for next week.

We don't plan to go public (local govt.) until July 05 so we have some time to plan.

Does any one have marketing/advertising suggestions to share, including PSAs and commercial ideas.?

Thanks!
Katherine