Recommended Reading: Slicing the Budget Pie: Get Support for the Staff You Need

In this excerpt from  the ICMI 2008 Contact Center Operations Report, ICMI consuling manager Dan Rickwalder, offers help to call center leaders whose budgets are being outpaced by contact volumes.

Two in three respondents [to the survey for the ICMI 2008 Contact Center Operations Report] reported that, compared to the previous 12 months, the growth rate of their contact center budget will be consistent with the expected growth rate of contact volumes. In most of the remaining centers, the budget’s growth rate will be less than the expected growth rate of contact volumes. Not surprisingly, only a handful of respondents indicated that their center’s budget will outpace the expected growth rate of contact volumes.

Only 59.5% of respondents feel upper management give the budget and support their contact center needs to provide quality service for customers and a good working environment for staff. The remaining respondents were either neutral on this issue (22.1%) or feel that their center does not receive the budget and support it needs (18.4%).

The biggest investment, by far, with regard to people over the next year is adding more agents (73.7%), followed by increasing spending on agent training (41.2%), adding supervisory and/or management staff (39.9%), increasing spending on agent incentives/retention programs (38.3%), and increasing spending on call center management and/or leadership training (37.4%).

The call center budget is but one plan that passes through the halls of Finance every budget season. And like every plan that comes through, the call center budget asks for more people and claims to be different than everyone else. And therein lies the problem — contact centers actually are different than other parts of the organization. While most of a company’s budget plans are fixed, a contact center needs to utilize a variable production-based model based on service level and the corresponding occupancy of the center. 

A fixed budget is exactly what it sounds like, a set dollar amount spread evenly throughout the year. This type of plan assumes that workload will remain consistent and so staffing and the work produced by that staff will not need to fluctuate with the volume of calls received by a center. Since call centers experience fluctuating volumes and workload and that workload cannot be completed without the staff to do it, a variable budget model is more appropriate for them.

Variable budget models allow the staff to fluctuate with the workload based on a rate of production. These models come from the factories where rates of production link directly to items built. Contact center planners often erroneously take this model and apply a “calls per hour” formula to calculate staff. For example, when past history demonstrates that agents handle 10 calls per payroll hour, then 100,000 calls received in a month would require 57.5 FTEs (100,000 calls/ 10 calls per hour/ 174 hours per month per FTE). This is a significant error for most planners because using “calls per hour” indicates a linear relationship with volumes and service performance. Using our example, if we need 57.5 FTEs for 100,000 calls, then we only need 5.7 FTEs for 10,000 calls. 

Another weakness of this model is that it does not incorporate changes in call handling time — as handling time changes so will the calls per hour. Perhaps the biggest weakness of this model is that by assuming a set “calls per hour”, it assumes the same amount of off phone time for every month. This allows no flexibility to easily adjust calls per hour to reflect off phone time issues like higher vacation time or the need for new system trainings.

Another example of a variable plan that does not account for service level and occupancy is the “workload plus shrinkage” model. This model incorporates call handling time but uses a set percentage of off phone time to determine staffing. For example, a center with 100,000 calls a month, a 220-second average handle time and a 25% shrinkage factor would require 43.9 FTEs (100,000 calls x 220s AHT /3600 seconds in an hour x 1.25 to increase staff for shrinkage /174 hours per FTE per month). This model improves on the calls per hour plan by incorporating handle time and attempting to define off phone time as a percentage. However this model also assumes a flat shrinkage and often does not incorporate occupancy time related to service ?level performance. 

While both models try to incorporate off phone time, they both fail to effectively communicate what that time is or how long it should be. They also fail to provide an effective forum for discussion around what assumptions can be changed, often leading to flat, “just lower the shrinkage 5%” demands from senior management.

The primary purpose of a staffing model is to establish a level of service and provide the staffing needed to meet that service on an ongoing basis. In order to do that, an effective staffing plan must:

1. Incorporate all workload

2. Adjust for planned service level and the resulting occupancy

3. Provide for monthly variation in time off the phones

4. Demonstrate how changes to the workload or staffing will affect the customer.

Call center planners who successfully incorporate these four principles into their plans will find explaining — and therefore getting the staff they need — much easier.   •