Before you can adequately staff a call center, there are a few things that you should know. Generally speaking, staffing a call center requires you to have a grasp on things like scheduling, staff requirements, and defining management roles.
The following aspects are some of the most important when it comes to staffing a call center.
The Main Issues
As with any other business, managing a call center is dependent on your ability to maximize the company’s efficiency without over-staffing. This means that you must have enough people on during every shift and enough people working for the company to cover all of the available shifts. Since you can outsource many of these jobs, it’s essential that you have a firm grasp on your employee needs.
Gathering and Analyzing Data
You will start by analyzing the needs of the call center based on its traffic. During times that the call center is busy, it makes sense to have more employees working. Likewise, at times where very few calls are coming through, you can cut back your staff. Once you analyze the data, you can ensure that your center runs much more efficiently.
Figuring Out the Workload
As you analyze the number of calls that come in, you can come up with some guidelines that determine your employee workload. This includes things like handling times and trend analysis
Your Staffing Requirements
The number of employees that you will need depends on how busy the call center is and how long it is open every day. Make sure that you have the ability to cover things like sick days and vacations.
Coming Up with a Schedule
Once you are sure that you have enough employees, you can start developing a schedule. Some workers might have specific shifts that they would rather work, but your goal is to make it fair for everyone. For example, you might decide that it’s fair to have workers work at least one block of night shifts per month.
Employee Skills
Analyze employee performance to ensure that you’re getting the most for your money. If certain employees aren’t pulling their weight, you can look into replacing them.
Managing Daily Staffing Needs
Your daily staffing needs could change depending on the time of year. For example, a credit card call center might have higher volume right after Christmas, as customers attempt to pay off their extra expenses.
Your Network Requirements
Managing a call center goes beyond simply hiring people to work the phones, as you will need people to run your network as well. If you are using a VoIP system, this need will increase. You might also require a Cloud computing system, which stores your data in a secure, off-site location.
Multimedia Contacts
If there are alternative ways for customers to reach you, such as social media or email, you should have staff on hand to answer these queries as well.
Putting Workforce Management on Auto-Pilot
After you have things running, you won’t want to micromanage every aspect of the business. You’ll want to identify the business’ basic and advanced functions, assess the requirements for these functions, and then select managers who can effectively manage them.
Alternatives to Staffing
Of course, you don’t have to handle all of your staffing on your own. It is possible to outsource this to a professional recruiting agency. This agency can handle everything from identifying your need for new employees to finding and screening them. When you go with an agency, you can automate most of your staffing, making your life much easier.
Managing Roles and Responsibilities
Ideally, you’ll be able to develop a team that can handle the day-to-day management of the call center. You will assign different roles to key people within the company and they will keep things functioning at a high level.