Outbound Call Calculator

[jacqueline]

I have heard that a calculator - similar to that used for inbound resourcing (erlang) has been developed. I have yet to find it on the net and was hoping someone could point me in the right direction.

I would also be interested to hear from anyone who can help with the reduction of idle time, in an outbound environment.

[Genny]

Check out www.optiumgroup.com. I found this through askjeeves.com (customer service center as topic).

The product is called e-calculator. You can also download it. Looks like a great tool.

Hope this is what you may be looking for.

Genny

[rjwooll]

Reduction of idle time in an outbound environment is normally achieved using predictive dialling. If your agents have long idle time between calls, it could be due to several things:

1. A number of unsuccessful call attempts being made before the next successful connection;

2. A nearly 'exhausted' dial list, containing only numbers that have been tried repeatedly in the past, unsuccessfully;

3. Depending on your centre's organisation, an excessively long 'wrap-up' time before they are ready for the next call.

A predictive dialler will allow you to address item 1 above, and control items 2 and 3, as the system will make calls in advance of agents being ready to handle them, using a dialling algorithm that makes assumptions about the number of unsuccessful call attempts to be made per succesful call and about where the agent is in a call.

Hope this helps! Call me if you'd like further info.

[ian.godfrey]

We have found with outbound calls we work backwards from the business objective. In order to calculate staffing requirements. If the objective is to contact x number of clients in a month. We would then use

Connects Desired = Total Dialer Man Hours
Calls per hour 7.0 hour per man day(8.5 hour day minus breaks and shrinkage

From this are able to forecast the number of agent to complete the objective in the time required.

If you are looking for a sales objective you should substitute RPC (Right Party Connects) into Connects Desired). This will also help in building a list size


On the second question:. If your are already using a Predictive Dialer, you need to look at the algorithm used on the job.
If not I would suggest starting the RFP process or ROI