Feature Article - Occupancy
In this edition, we take a look at a critical factor in call centre management that is often overlooked – occupancy. Occupancy can be defined as the amount of time call centre agents are actually occupied on customer contacts during a shift. It is usually measured as a percentage of the call centre agents total shift time spent busy in talk or wrap up. Occupancy is often used as a statistic in calculating call centre productivity and is a critical factor in call centre staffing.
The question to ask here is why should CC Managers measure occupancy rates in their environment? Low occupancy rate is an indication of an overstaffed call centre or poor scheduling scenario, and with call centre agent costs consuming over half of the call centre budget, Managers need to keep track of the resources. Likewise, an extremely high occupancy rate will indicate likelihood of high abandonment of contacts, and high pressure on call centre agents bringing on exhaustion and a downslide in quality standards.
For centres that have implemented skill based routing, it is important to track occupancy per skill group so as to determine a course of action when it gets overboard – possibly cross train other groups to allow for failover during peak periods. Understanding the work pressures being faced by call centre agents is a good reason for tracking the occupancy ratio.
Measuring agent occupancy is the reverse to service level. To improve service level, we’ll need to increase headcount effectively ensuring everyone is less busy thereby reducing occupancy. Likewise, to improve occupancy levels, we could reduce the head count, thereby increasing workload per person and creating less idle time. However this will impact negatively on the service level.
While there are no agreed industry standards, many call centre managers are of the opinion that a centre’s occupancy should not exceed eighty five percent (85%). This should ensure that your agents are not under pressure the whole shift and are therefore able to meet agreed quality standards.
One key way to ensure that the occupancy levels are at the right level is staffing (scheduling) accurately. Random call arrival in the call centre creates peak and off peak periods during a workday thereby making scheduling accurately more of an uphill battle for call centres. The trick therefore, is to schedule covering all the periods as adequately as possible without overstaffing whilst ensuring that agents are not under-utilised.
So while preparing that budget, make sure you’re monitoring the occupancy ratio as you analyse your service level and evaluate scheduling and staffing needs