Staffing

I may have not stated my question well. I have 30+ reps that are scheduled to work various shifts each day. Of course, each rep has a break schedule. My concern is that I do not know exactly how many reps I have on the phones at any given time. Short of adding up how many people should be in each hour, then subtracting the amount that are on break…I don’t have a better system. Put simply, if someone was to ask me how many reps do you have on the phones at 12:30 on a Monday…I would have to count…

Teri
I would suggest that if you cannot see in real time how many staff that you have, that your ACD/phine system isnt up to much.

To be able to tell how many staff you need,
a) identify the quantity of calls you receive per half hour. historical data should provide you with this, try averaging this over time and look for seasonal and individual day changes.
b) identify the call handle time, this may vary during the day as people get tired or the type of transaction vary. Handle time is talk time+wrap time+hold time. Hold time is the time a caller spends on hold when the agent is referring or looking up details and presses the hold button. hold time often isnt included in talk time. If an inbound call generates an outbound call include this time as well if not picked up in wrap time.
c) Identify what level of service you wish to provide, to do this identify how important each call is to you, if each call generates $10 and staff cost $5 an hour, you ideally want a very high service standard and vice versa.

d) then use an erlang calculator to work on the resources you need per half.

e) then schedule your staff.

f) you may find that part time staff help you to deal with the peak and troughs in call volumes over the day better than full time staff will.

i want to know what is the minimum breaks between shift ends and shift starts for agents

Hi Teri

Your ACD should provide this info. If it doesn’t then a simple spreadsheet should help you to calculate the number of staff you have working in your business at any given hour/½ hour of the day.

This does however mean that you are reliant on your staff to go on breaks and lunches at the specified time which we all know is not always possible.

There are other alternatives which include:

1. Purchase an ACD that can provide this info.

2. Purchase a WFM tool that will help you to forecast your requirements, schedule your staff and track their adherence to schedules.

3. Buy a tracking tool that your advisors can use to log in/out each time they come into or leave the work area.

All of these options may prove too costly for such a small operation, so I guess this very much depends on how critical is having this knowedge is to the success of your business.

On a final note, if a spreadsheet is what you are looking for, then I would be happy to help you to design one at no cost to you or your business.

Kind regards

Roberto