When it comes to hiring agents, call center staffing services is a major challenge. When dealing with a high volume of calls, the only choice for agents is to place the consumer on wait. And having to deal with (sometimes unpleasant and rude) customers on a daily basis without much acknowledgment exhausts them. Agent frustration and attrition is a result of this.
Managers have to cope with call center staffing challenges like agent attrition, which is a major call-center challenge. It’s one of the most expensive aspects of running a call center, and it’s a difficult statistic to improve.
How to staff your call center?
Call centre staffing may be a challenge for growing businesses with limited resources. It can be handled smartly by meticulous planning and execution. Hiring agents taking following metrics in account
- ACT (Average call time) spent by agent
- Call volume (number of calls answered in an hour)
- Time taken after answering the call.
If you have above metrics beforehand than you can use software to calculate staffing level.
Call center staffing challenges
As a call centre manager, the most difficult challenge is finding agents. Finding the right agent for the job is the most difficult assignment due to the profession’s high stress level.One of the most difficult challenges in a call center is agent attrition. You spend a lot of time and money on applicant screening, recruiting, and training, only to have them quit after a short period.
The main reasons are
Lack of acknowledgement
Most of the call centers lack rewards and recognition program, although being mistreated by furious clients.Without receiving adequate acknowledgment causes most staff to leave quickly. To overcome call center staffing challenges following steps has to be taken care of
- Increase the pay of employees
- Create a rewards and recognition system.
- Provide incentives to employees by allowing them to work from home.
Lack of staff motivation
Talking to consumer’s day in and day out and handling the same problems over and again may get tiresome, and agents might become bored quickly. After a few months, agents may lose interest in coming to work, which may lead to increased absenteeism. To overcome such call center staffing challenges Call centre gamification can be a great solution and work from home is also good option.
Over coming call center staffing challenges is difficult but it can be managed by hiring the right agent. Minimize workload on agents by using the right technologies like Interactive Voice Response (IVR) to automate a part of the routing process and call routing to transfer the call to the right department. Smart mangers keep the environment of the call center dynamic by encouraging agents, incentives and gamification.