How to avoid "shrinkage"... in a call center
I was a Workforce Manager for many years and trust me when I say “shrinkage” can make a HUGE difference in your daily production. Shrinkage is the unscheduled or scheduled activities that don’t allow the agents to do the actual job that they are being paid to do.
Foxie has a team full of people who have started up and managed call centers and we have put together a list of ways to help combat "shrinkage."
One way to look at it is that shrinkage is the difference between the time your agents are paid for answering calls and assisting customers and the amount of time they spend doing their job and making/receiving calls. The difference between the two is known as shrinkage. It includes everything that call center agents do with their time, other than helping their customers.
Two different kinds of shrinkage are included when call center shrinkage is calculated.
Internal Shrinkage
Meetings - team and one-on-one coaching and training
Systems’ downtime
Unscheduled breaks
Time spent helping different departments
Special projects work
External Shrinkage
Vacations
Late to work
Sick time
Absenteeism
Leaving early
How to calculate shrinkage - I could give you all the long and boring formulas, but nobody wants to read that. You should already have a reasonably accurate idea of the number of agents you need at any giventime to meet your SLA (service level agreement.) Here is one basic example:
Between 10:00 a.m. and 10:30 am, you know you need 50 agents on the phone. Imagine 5 agents are unavailable during that time for whatever reason, so 50/5=10%.
This makes the calculation easy. You need to increase the number of agents working by 10%, or 5 employees, to compensate for that shrinkage.
What does shrinkage affect?
- Efficiency - When your team is understaffed, it puts more stress on everyone and makes it harder for them to perform.
- Customer experience – Depending on your line of business, your customers might have different expectations for how quickly they expect you to respond. This is a huge reason to keep an eye on shrinkage because, without happy customers, you won’t have a business for long.
How do I reduce shrinkage? - To help reduce shrinkage, you should increase forecast and schedule accuracy by including all activities into the agent’s schedule: average call time, breaks, lunches, restroom breaks, chats, meetings, training, etc.
Monitor schedule adherence and work with your agents to improve it over time. Create daily, weekly, or monthly reports to show to your team so that they know you are aware, and so that they can focus on what needs to be improved upon.
Are you ready to take the next step toward better communication between your employees and your customers?
Allow us to introduce FoxieEngage!
Foxie has developed FoxieEngage, which is a single platform that gives you the ability to chat, respond to social media questions, text, talk, and communicate with your staff, customers, and vendors…all on their terms and in the way they choose to communicate with you.
