Contact Centers: Keep the Hub Humming

Because labor will be at the heart of your contact center in the future, determine if your management and technology usage boost your contact center’s productivity. Following are tactics some contact-center managers employ:

- Examine key metrics, especially those that offer accurate and timely measurement of cost per contact, call and order.
- Improve management strategies. Often improvements in customer service and productivity can be achieved with better execution of daily processes. Specifically, many catalogers could use the services of more trainers, HR administrators and scheduling/staffing analysts.
- Implement a personnel scheduling software package. A good program can result in a 10-percent to 15-percent reduction in the cost per call. Our studies show that if you track CSR utilization, you’ll find that paid vacation/sick days, breaks, pre-shift meetings, training sessions, and off-phone and administrative time may account for more than 25 percent of a CSR’s time annually.
- Use part-time personnel more effectively to gain flexibility in scheduling and lowering paid labor hours, and cost per contact, call and order.
- Implement an incentive program and commissions to improve sales per employee.
- Adapt technology to decrease costs. Explore the use of interactive voice response, computer telephony integration, call-prompting systems and other solutions.