Direct labor costs are the single largest cost element in every call or contact center.
In most organizations this cost is 60-70% of the total operating expense. With this
level of investment effectively configuring, managing and retaining staff in your center
is one of the most important challenges any manager faces.
The chart to the left illustrates the breakdown of operating costs in a call or contact center.
Effective decisions related to the mix of staff, their hours, compensation and scheduling has a
significant impact on an organizations ability to meet their performance and budget targets.
This document will focus on developing the most effective staff mix or composition.
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When looking at what is the optimal make up of your call center staff we must review a number
of factors that drive call or contact volume to the center, these include:
- Hours of operations;
- Call volume by day-part;
- Customer profile, by industry segment;
- Desired performance standards;
- Local wage and benefit costs;
- Depth of Knowledge and Training required;
- Company policies related to; hours worked, exempt/non-exempt employees and company and/or state regulations related hours worked as Full Time, Part-Time or Casual/Temporary staff.
By reviewing the above drivers and variables we can get a picture of when customers call,
the busy (peak) and slow periods of the operating day, what the local (labor) market supports in
terms of wages and what constraints may exist either based upon company policies and procedures of
based upon government regulation.
In virtually every call or contact center a mix of staff is employed. Very few centers today
operate with only a single class of employees (i.e. full time only). Best Practices vary by center
with the most common split being 75% Full-Time and 25% Part-Time staff. In centers with a high degree
of seasonality and volatility in their call center volumes you will often see splits such as 40%
Full-Time, 40% Part-Time and 20% Casual or temporary.
The benefits of optimizing your staff mix include:
- Staffing that more accurately matches call demand. By having the flexibility to schedule staff in smaller hourly blocks you are able to work to four hour ( and in some cases 2 hour) minimum staffing blocks, this is significantly more efficient that staffing only in 8 hour blocks of time;
- Improved flexibility to ramp up capacity quickly. Due to the nature of part-time or casual/temporary staff, you are able flex up or down their hours to match the increases or decreases in call volume. This improved flexibility also allows you to respond to changes in call volumes and arrival more quickly;
- Reduced overall labor costs. Part-time staff generally commands a lower hourly wage than full-time staff. In most organizations part-time staff receives little if any benefits. Both of these factors serve to reduce the overall operating expense in the center;
- Reduced staff burnout. The usual response to high volumes in a center is to try to get the existing staff to work longer and/or handle more calls. While this approach is viable for the short term, it will lead to burnout and staff turnover if it continues over a protracted period of time. The ability to increase part-time staff hours provides and alternative and protects the full-time agents from burnout and the turnover associated with it.
There are some challenges in moving towards a balanced staff mix that must also be considered. These include:
- Increased training costs. All staff will need to be trained, regardless of the agent class (Full, part-time or temporary/casual). If you move from 100% Full-Time staff to a 50/50 split between Full and Part-time you will increase the total number of agents by 25% and have a corresponding increase in training costs;
- Due to higher number of total staff, if the conditions which are driving turnover of call center staff are not simultaneously addressed you can see an increase in turnover. This is due to the mathematics of the situation a 25% increase in staff means that if 10 people left last year at a 20% turnover rate (there are 50 agents therefore in the center) and we increase the staff by 25% to 60, we still would lose 20% or 12 staff, with the associated costs.
In fact if the recruiting and hiring processes arent adjusted to communicate the correct positioning of the position to part-
time staff you can also see turnover of this staff based upon an expectation that they are expecting full-time hours and will leave
once they realize they will not get these hours.
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