Skip to content
BOL Conferences
Thread Options Tools
#933123 - 03/31/08 04:14 PM Help with Call Center Volume/Staffing
Loving Life Offline
100 Club
Loving Life
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 224
Florida
Our Call Center has recently been added to my list of areas of oversight and I am trying to determine if the staffing levels are appropriate. I have been provided some activity reports and we use Symposium software to track our call volume. For those that have Call Centers can you help me with what I should expect as average number of call per employee and average talk time per call? At first glance it seems we are most definately overstaffed but I'd like to try to compare our volume before reacting. Thanks for any help you can provide!
_________________________
Enjoy this moment..for this moment is your life.

Return to Top
General Discussion
#933263 - 03/31/08 07:00 PM Re: Help with Call Center Volume/Staffing Loving Life
FraudBuster Offline
100 Club
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 198
Indiana
Even though my most recent banking position was in fraud (detecting it, not committing it--sorry, I know it's an old joke), I did my time in the call center, too.

I would say that the best numeric measure of your Call Center's effectiveness is not so much time-per-call as wait-time-in-queue. I say this because a call center (in some places still called the "Customer Service Department") is essentially about customer satisfaction more than bank operations. The bank may be tempted to evaluate based on time-per-call, because that's what the bank is paying for, but you have to look at it from the customer's point of view. Customers do not begrudge time they spend talking with a person who seems motivated and competent to help meet their banking needs. A customer with a particularly complex issue may come away from a 20-minute call feeling very satisfied. But even 30 seconds of the "All operators are currently busy" message is incredibly aggravating.

If the average customer's wait for a representative is under 30 seconds, you are probably overstaffed. But if customers are typically waiting over a minute, something may be wrong, and if they are waiting over three minutes, something is definitely wrong, whether with the number of staff, the training they have received, or the software they are using to investigate and resolve customer service issues.

Call Center work is a lot more demanding than some people imagine. Every time the phone rings, there's the possibility of a simple balance inquiry, an irate customer who has discovered a bank error on the monthly statement, a potential stockholder wanting to speak with the president of the bank, or an attempted fraud. I recommend that before you jump to any conclusions about staff levels, procedures, etc., you set aside a fair bit of time to listen to recordings of calls, short, medium, and long. Try sitting at your own computer as you listen, and go through the steps the representative had to do in order to answer the customer's query based on the information they provided. I think you'll find that time-per-call is only a useful measurement when averaged over hundreds of calls.

When I worked in the Call Center, our supervisor used to meet with us periodically for training, and would evaluate our performance on a randomly selected recorded call. Once, I walked in for my training session, and as soon as I heard the customer's name, I thought, "Oh, no! Not THIS call! I'm gonna be in big trouble." The call was over 20 minutes long! And you know what? It was the best evaluation I ever got. My boss said, "You were so patient with that elderly customer, and you were finally able to solve her problem."
_________________________
Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or of my cats.

Return to Top
#934613 - 04/02/08 03:15 PM Re: Help with Call Center Volume/Staffing FraudBuster
Loving Life Offline
100 Club
Loving Life
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 224
Florida
FB - Thanks so much for your response. It seems to me from looking so far that our Call Center is doing just the opposite. The average call time is 2 minutes and the amount of time they are logged into the system to receive calls varies from 27-33 hours. These are full time employees so their log in time is low. In addition they are transferring out approximately 20-25% of the calls they receive and only receive about 50 calls per representative per day. Do you recall what the standard was from your call center days? I sure appreciate the help and you taking the time with me.
_________________________
Enjoy this moment..for this moment is your life.

Return to Top
#935206 - 04/02/08 10:25 PM Re: Help with Call Center Volume/Staffing Loving Life
FraudBuster Offline
100 Club
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 198
Indiana
I think I typically answered between 150 and 180 calls per day during my time at the Call Center. Of course, at my bank, we also doubled as the "switchboard" for the bank, so many of those calls were simply, "I need to speak with so-and-so"/"One moment, I'll connect you." (We were taught never to tell callers they would be "transferred", but somehow they were happier to be "connected" ).

I wonder about the large log-out times. Do you know yet what they're doing all those hours they're off the phone? I know that our log-off times increased when our bank went to a "one and done" approach, to reduce the number of calls transferred out by having the call center staff handle as much as possible themselves. To do that, we had to complete a lot of tasks after the customer had hung up. It meant that customers had to wait longer to speak with one of us (otherwise, the bank would have had to hire more of us), but on the other hand, once the customer reached a representative, they were far less likely to have to talk to anyone else in the bank. It's a definite trade-off, and each bank will probably strike a different balance.

By the way, have you learned what the average time in queue is?
Last edited by FraudBuster; 04/02/08 10:26 PM.
_________________________
Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or of my cats.

Return to Top
#935726 - 04/03/08 04:44 PM Re: Help with Call Center Volume/Staffing FraudBuster
Loving Life Offline
100 Club
Loving Life
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 224
Florida
I didn't find Average time in the queue but I did find Time Logged in and Waiting Time per Agent which is reflected in a %Work. For Example Agent 1 was Logged in 31:36:20 (hh/mm/ss)and had 21:28:46 of Waiting Time giving her a % Work of 29.06. This is about average for each of the Agents. The highest Work % is 36.19 and the lowest is 26.44.

As an example of a daily volume we answered 293 calls with 6 full time and 1 part time employee. The Average Talk time was 2:08 per call.

Aside from the reports when I visit the Department I find agents reading books. Call me crazy but I'm thinking if I knew when I came to work that I was going to stay busy with calls the majority of the time I wouldn't bother trying to read a book because I would anticipate being interrupted. On the other hand if I knew that I would have lots of time between calls on a regular basis I would definately bring something to keep me occupied. Using that logic I think the Department is overstaffed and they know they are too.

Rather than eliminate positions in this Department I would really like to have the branch direct dial lines ring in the Call Center first and then have the Call Center use the approach of retaining as many calls as possible rather than acting as a switchboard as they have been up to this point. Our branches receive many calls on their direct lines (which are published) and the whole reason we started a Call Center a few years back was to relieve the branches of these calls. This just has not happened since we continue to publish the branch numbers.

I think the Branch Manager should still keep a direct dial number that rings into their branch but it should not be published anywhere except on their business card. Is this similar to how your Call Center functioned?

I also really like the idea of "connecting" rather than "transferring" a caller.
_________________________
Enjoy this moment..for this moment is your life.

Return to Top
#935794 - 04/03/08 05:43 PM Re: Help with Call Center Volume/Staffing Loving Life
FraudBuster Offline
100 Club
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 198
Indiana
Our branches had published numbers, but the top number in the phone book led straight to the call center, and branches regularly "connected" callers to us for, say, a balance inquiry.

It sounds as if we might have been a much larger bank (or at least we had far more customers calling us) operating with the same size of staff as your call center (6 agents). We had about 60 branches and maybe 80,000 accounts when I was in the call center. The bank grew some after I left the call center, while staffing remained at six agents. We didn't have people routinely reading books when they weren't on break. We did occasionally have a slow day, and we might take advantage of the opportunity to catch our breath, but on a busy day (like payday), we were on the phone pretty much continuously, and trying somehow to fit in the paperwork somewhere.

Think long and hard before proposing changes (like transferring branch lines to the call center) that will greatly increase your call volume. I'm not saying you should never do it, but before you do, you might want to see if senior management will let you in on whatever plans they may have for future growth. If they intend to buy or build a bunch of new branches over the next few years, you may not want to expand your department's duties until you see how that shakes out. Right now, you have room to absorb the greater volume which growth will bring, but if you take steps now to fill up your agents' time, you will not be able to get rid of those "extra" duties later, and you may not get approval to add staff.

Good luck!
Last edited by FraudBuster; 04/03/08 05:44 PM.
_________________________
Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or of my cats.

Return to Top