Call Center Workforce Management: Backed by Technology and Innovation

Challenge #1 High agent turnover raises costs on employee onboarding and training.

• A yearly agent turnover rate in call centers is around 30-40%.
• Each new agent hire costs from $10,000 to $20,000 in training, direct recruiting costs, and lost productivity during ramp-up.
• Dissatisfied contact center employees are 8.5x times more likely to quit within a year.

How to address the challenge: increase agent retention through maintaining a positive work culture and driving employee satisfaction.

Challenge #2 Ineffective workforce fails to meet customer demands through poor planning.

• Approx. 85% of customers want to access customer support instantly when calling a company.
• Up to 60% of customers will hang up if their hold time exceeds two minutes.

How to address the challenge: balance workloads through wise calendar planning and real-time intraday management.

Challenge #3 Lackluster performance due to hectic schedules and employee burnout.

• The call center industry standard metric for workforce shrinkage is 30%.
• 60% of US call center workers are very likely to quit their jobs within the next six months.
• It takes from two weeks to two months to onboard a new call center agent and close the nesting phase – this is when they start work on their own.

How to address the challenge: optimize agent scheduling and staffing; organize extensive and easy-to-use knowledge bases.

Goal #1. Meet the industry service levels

• 80/20 rule
• FCR at 73%
• AHA 6 minutes
• 5% call abandonment rate

The call center industry-standard metric is answering 80% of calls in 20 seconds. The average handling time for a call is around 6 minutes.  A good industry standard metric is having 70% to 75% of calls resolved on the first contact. A 5% call abandonment rate or less is acceptable.

Solutions:

The metrics are not strict for all, though, and should be reconsidered for each particular call center setting:

• Implement an automatic call distribution system (ACD).
• Use real-time monitoring tools to measure productivity.
• Provide scripts for different call scenarios.
• Record and analyze incoming calls to find the quickest way to solve the problem.
• Train the staff and give access to an easy-to-use help desk and guides to improve agent skills.

Check out Juggl’s remote WFM solutions

Goal #2. Leverage workforce shrinkage

Workforce shrinkage is the time when the agent is not interacting with callers. The main reasons for shrinkage are sickness, days off, or agents being late. Internal activities are also considered: Zoom meetings, training, coaching, and downtimes.

Solutions:

Measuring shrinkage is crucial because this is how you plan your staff when call volumes surge. Active steps are necessary to reduce absenteeism:

• Use analytics tools to analyze patterns in attendance.
• Leverage forecasting tools to estimate staffing levels for different times of the week/year.
• Use scheduling tools to track work schedules, shifts, and more.
• Plan a joint team calendar to plan vacations and days off.

See Juggl’s workforce tracking

Goal #3. Keep occupancy at a reasonable rate

Maximum occupancy rate is the percentage of time agents spend handling calls. When the occupancy rate is 100% or more, it means that the employee is overworked and may experience burnout. Much less occupancy means the call center is wasting resources.

Solutions:

It is best to find the middle ground by analyzing each agent’s productivity and performance. Try to keep occupancy for agents between 80 and 85%.

• Track individual timesheets to spot high performers.
• Enforce work-life balance with reminders to take time off.
• Overview reports on incoming calls and messages to spot trends in demand.
• Store history reports to keep track of seasonal and weekly fluctuations

Have a look at reports in Juggl

Goal #4. Increase customer satisfaction rates

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is the metric that the majority of call centers use as the key indicator of their efficiency. The overall customer satisfaction index for the US is 77.3%, which is just a bit lower than the historic high.

Solutions:

• Automate scorecards to measure an agent’s success rate.
• Track individual FCR for various types of answers in calls.
• Implement skill-based routing to match the request with the agent having relevant expertise.
• Motivate agents to investigate the reason instead of rushing from one caller to another.
• Use interaction analytics and sentiment analysis tools to measure agent performance by predefined criteria (language, customer satisfaction, channels of communication, etc.).

View time-tracking and agent-reporting solution

Goal #5. Improve employee satisfaction

Increasing employee satisfaction is just as important. A well-trained and happy workforce is key to successful customer service.

Solutions:

• Automate employee reporting on timesheets and work done.
• Automate supervision processes to overview productivity analytics.
• Implement an employee's self-service to automate requests and approval processes.
• Streamline the payroll process to avoid miscalculations in timesheets and salaries.
• Facilitate regular, well-structured huddle meetings to discuss issues, reward top performers, and enforce a positive work environment.

Learn more about Juggl’s payroll solution

• Phones are still here: Around 30% of Millennials and Generation Z still prefer calling on the phone to contact brands.
• Search yourself before asking:  Around 61% of customers try self-service first for issue resolution.
• Self-service and chatbots: Additionally, about 58% would use chatbots for basic queries.
• Social media for support services: 67% of customers find it handy to get support on social media.

A contact center serves as a powerful leverage to build a solid brand’s reputation. It is crucial for contact centers to build omnichannel experiences. Curious facts:

• The omnichannel approach retains 9 out of 10 customers in contrast to only 3 out of 10 customers without an omnichannel strategy.
• 70% of customers expressed increased frustration after contacting a company via chatbots three years ago. Today, with the rise of GenAI, things became different.
• The contact center industry service levels are focused on more extensive, channel-specific metrics, such as First Contact Resolution, Average Speed of Answer.

Improving mobile services, such as expanding LTE and 5G networks, make call center solutions cheaper and more accessible worldwide. Three technologies – GenAI, conversational UI, and digital customer service are making the biggest impact on call center efficiency:

• It is expected that by 2040, GenAI will increase call and contact center productivity by 35%.
• Gartner found that 80% of call centers already use AI technologies to enhance customer interactions.