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Four Slides to Communicate Call Center Dynamics to Senior Manager in
10 minutes
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Minute by minute, calls arrive randomly, but when broken down to an
interval (30 minutes), we can get pretty accurate with the forecast
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First slide shows this – three internals of 150 calls offered,
arriving randomly during a 30-minute period. The message here is we
can’t control exactly when they’ll arrive, but we can determine the
overall number in a given interval:
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To overcome the challenges with the minute-by-minute
unpredictability, call centers use a formula to determine the number
of agents required during each ½ hour – Erlang C (or if you have a
WFM system, it may use a modified version).
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Based on our service objective – in this case, 85 percent of the
calls answered within 30 seconds and an overall average handle time
of six minutes – the program tells us we need 35 agents staffed
during the ½ period.
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What’s important here is to point out the fact that we need 35
people in chairs talking on the phone, in an after-call work state
or waiting for the phone to ring.
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With any fewer than 35 agents, we will not be successful in meeting
our objective. It’s not an average for the interval, it’s from
minute one to minute 30, we need to have 35 people.
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Once you get an understanding of the randomness of call arrivals and
staffing requirements to overcome it, the real fun begins. I,
personally, use this slide on a regular basis. It goes a long way in
explaining the major challenges of managing an inbound call center.
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When looking at the arrival lines compared to the staffing line, you
see there are times when we have more calls then people – otherwise
known as a queue. The key here is to explain that this is part of
the plan – ACDs are designed to hold calls in queue until agents
become available, and any service level objective below 100 percent
in zero seconds is planning for some type of queue. Some amount of
queuing is planned, but the only way to keep it under control is to
ensure that you have the right number of people – in this case, 35
from interval start to finish.
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The other take-away is the opposite of queues – when we have more
people staffed than calls, or idle time. Yes, this is also a
requirement in every call center – to overcome the minute-by-minute
random arrival, you have to build in some idle time. It’s a reality
and it can’t be compromised. The only way to reduce it is to remove
some of the staff, which will create queues, negatively impacting
service level.
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This is normally question-and-answer time. You need to be on your
toes and prepared to talk about idle times. Being able to
effectively communicate this will help you to gain a lot of
credibility.
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Bring all of the concepts together with real-life data from your
environment. The key here is to get the data out of the typical
report format and create a simple, clean, easy-to-read/understand
visual.
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Demonstrate how losing just a couple of agents can have a dramatic
impact on the service provided to customers. This also shows how
adding more staff doesn’t really add to the overall customer
experience.
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You can also use this slide to show how not staffing the right
number of agents impacts everyone on the floor. In this example,
losing a couple of people not only reduces the service provided, but
makes the agents who are on the phones work even harder.
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