Effective Resource Planning

[CallMGR]

I'd like some feedback on effective resource planning for a call center.

[Cindy Szpanelewski]

A lot depends on the type of calls you will be getting and what type of call center are you. I have a great deal of experience in the technical call center area and I use a special chart to analyze my staffing needs. I would look at the number of calls received per half hour, the total talk time and wrap up time of the call (the time spent on the phone and the time completing the documentation of the call), total call volumes per month, and I would base a day on 6 hours of phone time. This means that the agents would be available six hours per day on the phones and that the other two hours would be spent on projects and/or training. My team leader and I became very good at projecting new business and how many additional agents we would need to staff to be successful in handling the call volumes.

For instance if I have a talk time of 15 minutes per call that would allow each agent to take 24 calls per day multiplied times 20 days in a month and that would come out to 480 calls per month. The most important factors is how long does the total call take from the time the phone is picked up until the call is documented and either resolved or passed on to someone on a second level team. Once you have that base you can calculate how many calls can be taken in a month.

[ChrisH]

You'll really need to invest in a good WFM software package to assist you in staffing and creating schedules based on call arrival patterns (both by day of week and period of day) and handle time patterns. There are several good products out there, including Aspect (formerly TCS) and Blue Pumpkin (there are others but these are a couple that are widely used). You'll want to do research to see which products best fit your environment (may depend on the size of your center, whether you're skill-based routed, etc...).

In addition to good WFM software, you'll want to develop a model (in Excel for example) that you can use to determine your resource requirements. As Cindy mentioned, you'll want to consider your monthly volumes. Also, if you're in an inbound call environment, you'll need to account for random call arrival. You may want to use an Erlang C calculation to determine optimal occupancy (% of time associates are on a call or in wrap/work time versus total logged in time) or required associates based on your service level objective, average handle time, and volume. You'll also need to factor in time off the phones for vacation, training, coaching and development, attrition, newhire training time, etc... You'll want to identify what the drivers are for your volume (i.e., seasonal trends associates with weather, sales, or whatever), so that you can accurately forecast future volume and plan for it by increasing/decreasing staff.

Your primary determinants of how much staff you'll need will be volume, handle time, occupancy, and service level objective (or ASA target).

This is just some high level feedback of things to consider in resource planning. There are many, many other 'small' details that you'll need to think about.

Good luck!

[JoelDup]

It depends on what you mean be 'effective'. Effective in that you match the planning to the budget or the budget to the planning?

Often (sadly), RP is really determined by your budget. Is it already set or do you have room more money? Service goals, login times etc. mean little if the money is dished from above and you're forced to work with what you've got.

IF your planning can be based on service and operational goals etc. and your budget is flexible enough, use many of the measurements listed by others.

The real need it be part of an organization that sees the call center as an integral part of the business. Hopefully it is and you should have an easier time planning your resources effectively. If possible look into Workforce Manangement Applications. Erlangs aren't real effective if you're using or thinking about using a skills based work and call routing approach.

[learner2002]

If relevant, you may also want to consider planning your resources in such a way that non-real time customer interactions be done during non-peak hours. What I mean is, for instance, if your call center also handles e-mails from customers, you may want to schedule your staff (assuming that they have to multi-task) to reply/ attend to them in those periods when the call volume is low. The same goes for fax responses.

Hope that helps.

[JoeB]

As previously noted, this is a hard question to answer: I assume that you focus on human resources and not, for example telephony. Do you mean ‘effective’ in that they meet performance criteria or ‘efficient’, considering budgets, etc. As Chris H. noted, there are many factors that add up in creating a call center that is both effective and efficient.

A common dilemma in resource planning is determining the number of agents needed to meet predetermined performance criteria. Unfortunately, this is more complex than simply multiplying call time by the number of agents to get the total capacity of the call center and match it to the call volume. Call traffic in a call center has a more complex statistical nature that requires modeling (e.g. Erlang C mentioned above) and an optimization process to determine required stuffing levels. See http://www.diagnosticstrategies.com/...0Modeling.pdf. BTW, This also calculates staff utilization (i.e. efficiency) and telephony resource requirements.

Good luck,

Joe Barkai
DIAGNOSTIC STRATEGIES
http://www.DiagnosticStrategies.com/
Tel. 781-433-0833