Hello all,
I'm seeking advice in how to approach a situation with those above me. They don't seem to understand my view on this subject. OK, to set up the scenario:

I'm a Team Leader in one of many departments for an outsourcing agency that handles multiple companies. The current situation with "my company" is that we receive inbound calls directly to us and we also receive an "overflow" from the main company. Some of the client-contacts say that we receive calls based on their staffing, others say that it strictly comes from the IVR options customers choose, but enough about that, that only describes the roller coaster volume we receive.

With this volume it has been a difficult task to achieve my Calls Per Hour goal. So we have crosstrained individuals to also handle a separate company's calls (I get to minus the ACD time out of my staffed time). They are skilled so that the primary company has priority, but our goals are 70%/30 sec and these other calls take about the same time as our normal calls; approximately 3:30. The problem I have is that we do have 2 periods of the day that generally are the busiest. Let's say 10 calls pile into the queue and I have 4 people on another call type, they finally get done and then we are 15 deep. Finally clear it and those other agents are back on the other calls and we fill the queue right back up. Let the downward spiral begin.

I've asked to provide a schedule and have them de-skilled during these times. The answer is no, that it is not possible without manually going in and doing it. We use Avaya CMS Supervisor r12 and what I've read in help is that through scripting this is possible. (There is only 1 person, the 'main' boss here that reserves the right to skill/de-skill CSR's, I will refrain from mentioning power trip.) I also asked that I use multiple logins for these CSR's, i.e., one login is skilled to one company and one is skilled to both. That way, since I'm on the frontline and watch my queue like a hawk all day, I could make the decision to dedicate 100% when needed and multiskill, in a sense, with the other phone login when not needed. The answer was no. This strategy would also apply for the unexpected increase/decrease in volume outside of the trended busier times.

While multi-skilling has the opportunity to help my CPH, it also at times does not help my service level. I love the idea, but just feel it needs to be and can be controlled with positive results all around. If anyone can offer any other ideas/suggestions it would be greatly appreciated. Or you can tell me to quit whining :P

OK,

Point on. You are NOT whining, let's get that straight.

A couple of other points first to set the ground.

The problem here is not with you or your team (Who I suspect are more Pi**ed off than you are about it).

Avaya systems are new to me but I'll take a stab that they run the same way as priority / skillset moves in Symposium.

Calls per hour is not an achievable or even particularly relevent stat to measure in these circumstances. You don't
have enough staff in the right place at the right time, it's as simple as that.

The first question is; are the peaks regular? Is it the same time per day? If so an upstaff, no breaks for the hour *may* be the quick fix.

However as far as I can see you've come up with 3 good suggestions and been denied 3 thrice. What do they expect you to do? I'll hazard a guess you're being told your call length is too long.

The one major point behind modern (ha ha) CCR systems is the fact they allow TEAM MANAGERS to move their staff as and when required. The deciscion should be yours.

The idea of multi logins (one for 2 skillsets and one for the primary queue) can lead to problems, agents have to Log on/off. This will stuff things like your Login hour reports etc.

So what do you do? Well a coup is always an option [1]. Howevermost companies object to staff uprisings and this close
to Christmas getting a company to clean the blood off the walls will be hell...

I'd start by mapping the callflow across both lines along with the AHT for each line. Then doing the basic calcs. This will give you the 210 sec call length therfore an agent can handle 8 (and a bit) call per half hour. This
will probably give you the number your Manglement is using to set the CPH figure.

What they need is a wake up call that THIS IS WRONG. Look up Erlang in the search on this site. I've explained this before however I'm in the process of writing a technical paper on the whole Erlang / Poisson / Binomial distribution and the application of the Mu function in call flow planning.[2] All I can find at the moment is 'it works because it works' kind of thing. A proper explanation is probably overdue. I'll try and keep this aimed at a basic math knowledge.

All you can really do is explain it in simple terms [4] and hope you can get through to him, lets face it he wouldn't be the "Big Boss" without some knowledge of call centers would he[5].

Good luck because I won't soft soap. You have a serious problem, however you've tried, you (or your team) has done nothing wrong here. You just need to get through to TPTB.

Remember though, if you didn't have a sense of humor you shouldn't have taken the job :-)

HTH (If only a little)

DaveA







[1] Suggested Reading: "The Prince", Nicolo Machiavelli or "The Art of War", Sun Tsu. Both available from Amazon.

[2] Sounds good doesn't it. Bet you can't wait :-) [3]

[3] There is some work I've started to do using FPP (Fractal point
Processes), but that'd be TOO geeky even for me to go into here.

[4] Although a lump of 2x4 helps.

[5] I'm deluding myself aren't I?

Why not set an availability flag against your secondary workload.

What you want is ensure that there are agents available to pick up the primary calls, I would suggest is that the scripts are set so that secondary calls are only offered to your agents when more than "x" are available to take calls.

"x" could be set at 2 agents so that whenever there are two or less agents available no secondary calls are routed to your agents. When more that two become available secondary calls can overflow to your agents until again only two are available.

If "x" is set as a variable that you can adjust you can then vary that availability throughout the day according to how busy the primary calls are. If you know you are about to hit a peak on primary calls just raise the threshold for secondary calls a few minutes in advance to clear the decks before the peak sets in.

The beauty of this way is that you dont have to swap skillsets or logins so no additional work is placed on anyone but you get to control what comes into the call centre.

Dave:
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Actually the team likes it, the ones that are multi-skilled get higher CPH (which is a big part of their bonus) plus for doing the extra work, as long as they have a 70% pay/call ratio on this 2nd skill, they get an extra $25 bux a week on top of the $100 bonus because generally they hit the CPH goal of 15.

Unfortunately the CPH KPI is widely used here, not just in my department. I think I'm going to look into creating a new bonus structure for my department focused more towards quality, adherance, etc.

I can try scheduling breaks around those times. The reason why I shy away from that idea is that currently I have the least amount of people off the phones in every 15 minute interval throughout the day. I don't want to *fix* one problem and create another.

I staff to daily projection broken down in half hours. The target that I'm given is 12 CPH so that we make revenue. I use both erlang agents required (erlang excel plugin) and I also have a column based on 12 CPH. I'll definitely be watching for your paper and I have read one of the other papers you wrote.

I know how much my inbound and transferred calls are worth, but not this is other skill, which my gut tells me that they are probably worth more.

Thanks for the response, I figured that I pretty much have done everything I can, but I am still just a young pup. Started out as a CSR, then Asst Team Leader, and now Team Leader for 1.5 yr's. I laugh everyday in this crazy world of call center, usually at your posts too, very entertaining threads in here.

Julian:
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I could ask to see if that is a possibility. The way it's set right now is just to see if there is a single agent available, if they are and they're multi-skilled they'll get that call. There in lies the problem, during the next 3.5 minutes calls come in that I need answered within 30 seconds.

I honestly doubt they will do that since the whole reason that this is being done in the first place is to increase my revenue or CPH if you will. I'll check through Help to see if we have that capability though.