Call centers are a powerful tool used to fuel customer satisfaction and mitigate issues. Support agents may become the first and the only point of contact between the customer and the brand. That’s why the importance of contact centers should not be underestimated.
However, work in call centers is considered one of the most stressful. Why does it happen so? Are call center employees not taken seriously? We’ve tried to figure it out looking through sincere reviews from people who’ve been there.
Most descriptions of jobs in call centers are extremely negative. “A concentration camp set up to make people quit”, “staff treated like prisoners”, “my mental health is destroyed, and management doesn’t care at all” – these are only a few metaphors that former call center agents shared.
It made us create this call center workforce management guide. Based on real-life examples, we illustrate the most typical challenges in call center management. Alongside, we show some best practices in managing call centers that easily turn the drag into a rewarding occupation.
Let’s get down to the basics first.
Workforce management in call centers (WFM for short) is a set of rules and techniques helping to plan, track, and assess agents’ work, including time, attendance, workload, and more. It envisages tracking dozens of KPIs connected with the quality of service. Call center managers deal with an abundance of metrics, to name a few:
Different types of businesses need call centers for diverse tasks. For example, it can be:
Naturally, managing the workforce in various call centers drastically differs based on the major conditions, such as:
There’s a widely shared view of an agent’s role in a call center as a dead-end job. But at closer inspection, there are a lot of nuances that matter.
Today, more than 60% of call center agents have the opportunity to work on hybrid work models, combining remote work from home with in-office hours.
Moreover, there is a growing number of outsourced customer services through third-party vendors (so-called virtual call centers). For large multinational enterprises, it is quite common to get support from an agent from another country.
What drives support agents mad? Most often, they complain about
All these factors lead to quick burnout and high employee turnover.
According to recent research, only 13% of call center agents would leave their job because it was boring. Nearly 40% of the respondents replied they found a better job. In the meantime, over a third of the respondents quoted the lack of career growth and poor work-life balance as the main reasons for quitting.
Efficient management is vital for the success of customer services. Workforce management in a contact center covers a large set of tools and practices helping to improve the quality of work for its agents.
According to research by McKinsey & Company, engaged and satisfied contact center employees are 8.5X more likely to stay than leave within a year and 3.3X more likely to feel extremely empowered to resolve customer issues.
But what does it take to create a favorable work environment in call centers?
We’ve looked through stories where former call center agents shared their grievances. Here are the most common issues occurring in call center workforce management. Alongside, we list some best practices that could potentially prevent them.
In this example, a representative had worked in a few call centers, but the last one was rough.
“Monitoring calls constantly, call times, call quality, the amount of calls, inbounds vs. outbounds, the amount of appointments scheduled, the amount of calls in queue. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
No wonder the agent felt under stress. Besides working with clients, the agent had to deal with monitoring workloads. Sounds like a double burden.
Call center agents must work with callers, while all the monitoring must go to managers. You can easily track time for performed tasks with call center workforce management software. Such tools make it possible to tackle various scenarios in contact centers, for example:
An example of such WFM software is Juggl. It allows tracking personal work records and timesheets and, most importantly, calculating payrolls. The service integrates with specialized call center software and CRMs. This turns it into a robust tool for workforce monitoring and paying salaries quickly and correctly.
Companies often outsource support services to third parties. For example, large companies like Amazon, Airbnb, and Salesforce use the services of virtual call centers. Vendors hire remote agents to work from home. This reduces costs for businesses while maintaining a high level of customer support.
Remote work is often a huge advantage. Here are some considerations over a job description for a call center agent:
“I'm hoping to get into IT – that's why I'm eager to apply for the position. Also, a little extra pay. Currently, my company offers remote work, no holiday pay (but I can be off on those days, I think 6 total holidays). Also, birthday off (not paid), super expensive healthcare insurance I can't afford, PTO (1.5ish hours per paycheck, like 40 for the year).”
The main challenge of remote hiring is meeting tax requirements and labor laws. This applies to any location, whether you are outstaffing in India, the Philippines, or across the USA.
Tracking workload in call centers and aligning it with payments is particularly tough. Like in the case with the Juggl customer, accountants wasted days verifying information across multiple Excel timesheets. The good news is that all these tasks can be automated.
Here is an example of how Juggle helped:
It shows how contact center workforce management software can help optimize work administrative staff and improve employee experience as well. It frees up time for other important tasks.
This is how a call center agent describes the hectic schedule:
“I take inbound calls for a major logistics company – 8 hours a day, averaging 90-100 calls per day. All calls need to be logged, but we have ZERO ACW allowed. I feel like I don’t even have time to breathe.”
When a call center representative must switch from one call to another in no time, the whole system is flawed. It is stressful and next to impossible to deal with phone calls non-stop without a wrap-up, let alone a short break.
For example, a call center representative may need to research a client’s case or send follow-up messages to ensure the case is resolved. Tasks like these should be considered. It is a very good idea to set aside time for AWC.
Work overload leads to fatigue, and employees make mistakes (alas, callers are very seldom aware of this!). Conscientious workers may develop anxiety, like in this example:
“I average 65 calls per day, and lately I have caught a few of my own mistakes where I told customers something wrong... So I tried calling back and sending an email apologizing and explaining, with no response yet.”
The question deals with the quality of services and potential issues in the future. The customer will have troubles, then they may come back with negative feedback and a claim.
In this example, it would be helpful to:
Tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey help gather opinions on an issue and get a structured overview of responses.
Employees in call centers often come and go. For HR managers, it means a lot of drudgery work with hiring and firing. Here is another story:
“I had enough one day about 3 weeks ago. I told my boss I was leaving early and haven't been back since. Thankfully, I've had some good leads elsewhere.
I recently checked my old scheduling app. I noticed not only am I still in the system, but I'm still being scheduled in the call center. Why haven't they terminated me yet? Lol”
No secret HRs need to do a lot of paperwork for terminating an employee. Such agents may need to perform their duties until they get the final termination notice. It actually depends on the contract terms.
A situation like this may come off as job abandonment and affect the termination payouts. Anyway, it may come out unpleasant both for the employee and the firing manager.
It is necessary to outline job duties and responsibilities from the outset. For a newcomer, a smooth onboarding process is half the success. Working from home, a call center employee may totally miss the overall picture.
Juggl handles this issue as well. One of the benefits of its workforce management system is the part showing remote workflows, including:
Another issue common in large companies with complicated technical products is a lack of expertise to resolve issues quickly. Here is an example from a call center of a leading tech company:
“They put you through a speedrun training course and then throw you to the wolves before you've actually figured out anything. The learning curve is rough.”
Here, the agent didn’t know how to troubleshoot the issue instantly. Even more so, they didn’t find anyone to help with it during the day – everyone was busy. Remember the annoying automatic answer: “Thank you for your patience, we (don’t) care what you think”?
Your company may provide an extensive knowledge base, help materials, and expert advice. However, handling time for individual clients’ cases still takes up a lot of time. What could possibly help here? Here are a few ideas:
Sometimes employees just need more money.
“The company I work for is changing the structure of part-time, and now I won’t be roistered for weekends. So I get no penalties, which s***s! You get time and a half on Saturdays and double time on Sundays. So I’m gonna lose money 😭 I know I should just do full-time, but I prefer a 4-day week as opposed to 5.”
And there is nothing wrong with it.
Some are ready to work on Sundays, while others do not want to sacrifice their family time, for instance. Flexibility is the best part of shift work, which is often the case with call centers.
Some contact center managers prefer to set up a fair work and payment system. But it shouldn’t be imposed at somebody’s disadvantage.
It is a nice idea to survey newcomers. Are they ready to work on weekends? Night shifts? Longer shifts?
By clarifying this information, managers create a list of people’s skills and work preferences. The rest goes to scheduling and calendar management. Take down their preferences in your call center workforce management system.
Give employees the possibility to submit requests for vacations or days off by themselves. On the one hand, agents will be able to plan their working schedules by themselves. On the other hand, managers can overview each employee’s timesheets and overview a collaborative calendar to plan labor force.
Done with the negatives. Many call center specialists actually like their jobs (otherwise, nobody would ever do it). Some people have all the communication and problem-solving skills to fit this job. But they simply want growth:
“I’m looking for jobs that my call center skills can transfer over to. I work for a health insurance company in their payment department. I process premium payments and solve any premium billing issues. I would like a job where I do not talk to people on the phones; my brain cannot take it lol.”
Is career growth possible for call center agents?
If you’ve invested a lot of training, time, and resources in your successful agents, you wouldn’t let them go away easily.
With demand for career growth, companies should offer promotion opportunities to their best specialists. A straight path for call center operators is to become a call center manager or a trainer for newcomers.
This flow is possible when HRs gather feedback from employees and do interim assessments. Analytics tools can help you track each person’s performance and spot the best candidates for promotions.
What if there is no way to move up in the same call center? Then, the employee can move on to other jobs that involve talking directly with people. These can be a sales representative, an insurance adjuster, a legal assistant, and more.
Finally, not all jobs in call centers are so bad because they are stressful – some of them are simply boring:
“I just started a call center job for an international company where I must make calls for 8 hours. And while it's easy, it's the most boring job I could have imagined. 99% of the calls are not even answered. And the ones that do almost always end with the customer turning off the phone in my face in the middle of my sales pitch.”
Cold calling is tough, yet some people nail it.
For the case above, it would probably help to revise the messaging, the target database, and the offer. For the worker, it might be nice to diversify the routine with a couple of more creative tasks.
However, there is one surefire way to fix it.
Do you think it’s impossible with call centers? Here is a different opinion:
“Seek a job with incoming calls where callers are usually glad to be working with you. I work for a hotel company. Been at it for 23 years now.”
Improving agent satisfaction has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. Nurturing a good work culture is a win-win WFM strategy. Therefore, companies should improve employee experience by removing the routine tasks that automation can handle:
1. Eliminate the burden of tracking and reporting. Automate performance measurements so that agents can focus on their actual work.
2. Allow employees to plan their schedules by themselves. With self-scheduling tools, it is much easier to plan the workforce efficiently and let employees feel involved.
3. Foster work-life balance. Obligate employees to take time off, especially those working night shifts and doing overtime. Productivity planning tools allow monitoring this, too.
4. Increase transparency and visibility. Automate payroll calculations and payslip distribution based on working hours and the achieved KPIs. Learn how Juggl does it.
An efficient WFM system powered by automation and analytics helps contact centers succeed in many ways. It allows managers to optimize schedules, improve customer service, and shape a positive brand image. As a result, the fine-tuned system becomes rewarding to both employees and customers.
Call centers use a mix of technologies, combining call registration, ticketing, productivity systems, and some other tools. It can be specialized call center software for on-the-phone support, such as Aircall. Alternatively, it can be general-purpose CRM software that, among other things, includes calling features, such as Hubspot or Zendesk.
The key functions of a call center workforce management system are:
And depending on the type and scope of the business, tools and technology may vary. It matters whether you need inbound or outbound calls, 24/7 or daytime work hour service, and the like.
If you recognize your case in this article, maybe you want advice with workforce management in your call center. Then, contact us to see what Juggl has to offer.
