Work-load & Service Level and the Wrong Way to Resource

Author: CCa2z

Date: 13th October 2004

The methods of calculating staff in a call centre differ significantly from methods used for general productivity.  Given the same hours of workload, say 20 hrs, resourcing requirements will differ between the two areas:

Production - Required Staff Hours  =  Hours Workload  -  here, for instance in paper processing, when one piece of paperwork is completed, the next is ready and waiting.  The work is constant and, therefore, if 20 hrs of work is available in 1 hr, 20 staff will be required.

Telephones - Required Staff Hours  >  Hours Workload - here, complexities arise, as incoming calls are not sequential, as above, but occur in a random fashion.  To assume call centre resourcing is calculated in the same manner, as production would lead to severe under staffing.

The same 20 hrs workload in 1 hr may, within the call centre, be offered within the first 15 mins of the hour.  In call centres an hour of workload is described as an Erlang.  An hour of Erlang staffing requirements is greater than normal requirements as it builds in delays due to callers queuing.

Many call centres resource on the production method, which is quite erroneous and the seat of many of the problems.  In many cases this is not negligence but ignorance of call centre dynamics.

Service Level - To add to this complexity, there should be a desire to answer calls within a given service level, say x % of calls answered < y secs.  The resourcing dependency of any organisation should be aligned to its service level objective.

If company 'A' and 'B', with similar processes/systems, resource to different service levels, then they will perform quite differently - 'A' may answer the call immediately because they have resourced to a high service level (say 90% of calls answered < 5 secs, yet 'B' may take an age to answer as they have resourced to a low service level (say 90% of calls answered < 40 secs.  (Low service levels mean caller delay, continuous calls for staff due to calls in the queue, no wait times between calls and, of course, high occupancy).

So in a call centre, we cannot merely say we receive 'x' calls therefore we need 'y' staff, we must also define our service level target.


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