Facilities

We are about to expand our outbound telesales group from 16 people to 25 people. We will be relocating to new space that will accomodate as many as 48 people. We will be outfitting the space with new cubicles. Do you have any best practices on the most effective cubicle wall height? We are currently considering 5' wall heights. Thank you for whatever information you can provide.

My client is preparing to move their call center to a new location. I am attempting to find a Project Plan (e.g., MS Project, Excel Project template, etc.) to use on my client's behalf, to help ensure I don't miss any important concerns as we prepare for the move. Any assistance on providing a project plan template, even if it is generic, is appreciated. Thank you. Steve Holderness

We have started up a call centre less than 6 months ago. We are still fresh and new and planning to start with guidelines for training and call monitoring for agents. We have 60+ agents and increasing from month to month. I don't know where can I find some materials to recommend in order to conduct and implement on training and QA score guideline. Maybe you folks could help me on this as i need it urgently. -- Roymox, Telecommunication

We are going to start our new Inbound call center very soon. Previously, we have provided both outbound and inbound support. In the near future, we mainly focus on the inbound sector. At present we have 5 units to cover all the works, namely Complaint management, Quality management, Product and Information management, Special service department and HR and admin management. We are planning to redesign our whole process flow of Inbound Center. Any NEW idea pops in anyone's mind would be great help. -- ishtiaque, AKTEL

I am currently creating a proposal to give an indication of dialler admin and resource support numbers required per FTE. I am having difficulty in determining what the backoffice dialler admin and resource staffing needs will be for the center. There is 140FTE 8-9 M-F and 9-1 Sat call center. Currently, I have 2 full time and 2 part time dialler admin, 1 full time dialler supervisor and 1.8 FTE Resource admin and 1 resource supervisor I am very interested in how other call centers are structured. Please let me know if you can share any insight on this. Thanks.-- Shraddha Panday, NAB

I am interested to know about the fixed line (land phone) customer operation's process, KPI, and agent KPI. Is there any standard KPI target -- Average Handle Time (AHT), Service Level, After Call Work (ACW), Average Speed of Answer (ASA) -- in the fixed line customer operation? Please share your valuable experience regarding call centers of fixed line company. -- Md.Raish Ul Haque Khan, Orascom Telecom Bangladesh (Banglalink)

I would like to know how a call center works, how is that managed. I also need information how deals with vendor and provider is made, bill is made. Thanks. -- M Mostafizur Rahman, Information & Call Center Technologies

Hi. I run a call center company with 400+ staff, separated into about 15 departments. Departments range from 3 people up to 70 people. Departments increase and decrease in size almost organically over time. We only have a certain amount of space and my challenge is managing the seating, as I'd rather not move groups around too much. But obviously this has to happen sometimes to fit people in. My challenge is that it's quite complicated doing the planning for seat rearrangement. Does anyone know of any software solution that could help me manage my seating requirements? I can't find anything on the web and I'm sure I'm not the only manager to face this challenge within the call center environment. Thanks for your help. -- Shaun Paterson, OSRP LLC

What all the ways and means to improve seat utilization? Is there any Excel template to track the same? -- Uma Shankar, TCS

I have recently accepted a customer service manager position for a marketing company. Whilst I have been in this role for many years, the owner has asked me to be in charge of setting up a call centre, incoming calls only, and a team of five people. I have no experience of what's involved or where to start. Do you have any tips? Many thanks -- Anna