Six Attributes of Great Contact Center Plan

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Six Attributes of a Great Contact Center Plan

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1. Plan Should Consider Risk Factors

• Many operations are made complex because of
  seasonality and variability. Volumes, handle
  times, sick times, absence, agent attrition,
  contact rates, and other important metrics are
  both seasonal and variable
• Knowing the risk factors, you should be able to
  change your organizations plans. If you know
  weather affects your volumes, then a history of
  weathers influence should inform your plan in
  terms of staffing to manage variability

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2. Plan Should Be Accurate

• Most contact center managers look for an accurate
  volume forecast, which is important. But it is
  also vital that other important metrics are
  forecasted well. For instance, sick time and
  other shrinkage items are important to forecast
• If the forecast of an item affects the accuracy
  of your plan, then you have to correct it

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3. Plan Should Be Optimal, Not Wasteful

• Plans that are developed using just-in-time
  staffing algorithms do a great job of squeezing
  out wasteful over-staffing
• These algorithms should consider learning curves
  and training time, as well as the differences
  across various centers that handle the same calls

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4. Include Financials

• In many organizations, the capacity plan is the
  purview of the operation, while the budget is the
  responsibility of finance
• But keep in mind that while developing the
  capacity planand doing all of the what-if
  scenarios that go with the capacity planmarginal
  costs and marginal revenues of any what-if should
  be a prominent part of the analysis

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5. Optimize Capacity Plan

• Once you know how many agents are needed weekly,
  you must put together a hiring, overtime,
  undertime, and controllable shrinkage plan.
  Optimization algorithms work nicely for this (and
  save you money!)

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6. Executive Decision-Making Meetings

• The best companies view their planning review
  meetings as decision-making meetings (and not as
  a beat up the forecaster meeting). Make these
  productive by using variance as an item that
  indicates change and an executive decision.

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Successful contact center operations invest in
their planning and use it to make great
decisions. Take a look at your planning process
and see whether these best practices are part of
your procedure!
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