How to Enhance Service Level in the Call Center

Service level is an important KPI that measures the degree of accessibility of a call center to their customers. Service level can have a large impact on service quality, and as a result, revenue. It is therefore imperative that management constantly measure service level over time and engage in preventative or reparative tactics to help enhance service level when it slips. The following are 17 tips, tools and techniques that will allow you to enhance service level.

1) Optimize workforce management

Workforce management involves forecasting call volumes, scheduling the optimal number of agents to work at any given day or period of time throughout the day, creating schedules for each agent and making adjustments to the workforce as needed. This is a complex task that involves taking into account:

• Historical call volume trends
• Target service level
• The number of agents available (i.e. accounting for agents arriving late, absenteeism, sick days, vacation days, etc.)
• Upcoming marketing campaigns, product promotions and product launches
• Time agents spend on calls and after call work
• Time spent providing support on different channels (i.e. chat, email, phone, social media, etc.)
• Breaks, trainings and meetings

It is also essential that managers build in some flexibility when scheduling their workforce and anticipate that unplanned events will happen (i.e. agents call in sick, have to leave early, take longer breaks than expected, require more training, etc.) and that call volumes will fluctuate as they are somewhat unpredictable.

When workforce management is not optimized, it can have a large impact on both service level and the company’s bottom line. Understaffing results in fewer agents fielding calls, longer wait times and a decline in service level. Overstaffing results in more available agents, shorter wait times and an increase in service level, however overstaffing is more costly and can negatively impact the budget. Thus, optimizing workforce management is the key to enhancing service level.

2) Optimize occupancy rates

Occupancy rate is the percentage of time that agents are performing work-related duties (i.e. talking with customers, performing after call work like updating databases, sending emails, etc.) vs. the total time that they are logged in.  An example of an occupancy rate equation is:

Occupancy rate = (total call handing and after call work time – idle time) / total logged in time

Occupancy rates are typically inversely proportional to service level. High occupancy rates indicate that agents are less available to field calls, callers wait longer and service level declines. Low occupancy rates indicate that agents are more available to field calls, calls are answered immediately and service level increases.

Occupancy rates that are too high (i.e. over 90%) are indicative of an extreme workload for agents. This typically results in increased agent stress, decrease agent effectiveness, decreased agent satisfaction and increased agent turnover. Occupancy rates that are too low are typically indicative of less than optimal workforce management and can increase costs (as more agents are on staff than necessary), increase agent boredom and decrease agent satisfaction. Thus, management should strive to create a balance between optimizing occupancy rates and service level.

3) Increase schedule adherence

While workforce management is essential to ensuring that the optimal number of agents are scheduled to field calls, service level will not improve unless the agents adhere to their designated schedules. When agents take longer on breaks, take their lunch at an unscheduled time or spend time at their desk on non-work related tasks (i.e. checking social media sites instead of fielding calls) fewer agents will be available to field calls than planned and service level will decline.

It is essential that managers constantly monitor schedule adherence and make staffing adjustments accordingly. Management should also expect that agents will not completely adhere to their schedule 100% of the time and taking this into account when making staffing decisions. These changes will positively impact both occupancy rates and service level.

4) Improve call forecasting

Predicting the overall volume and the arrival patterns of calls throughout the day can be a challenging task. This involves analyzing historical ACD data (i.e. call volume, handle times, arrival patterns, etc.) as well as taking into account:

• Upcoming marketing campaigns and product promotions
• Repeated events (i.e. dates customers are charged, billing due dates, etc.)
• Product launches, glitches, bugs, etc.
• Market fluctuations and industry trends, events and activities
• Weather patterns, natural disasters, power outages, major events (both local and global), etc.
• Holidays, days of the week, time of the day

The more comprehensive your call forecasting, the more accurate your workforce management and scheduling and service level will improve.

5) Reduce agent attrition

Agent attrition is the percentage of agents that leave their position (i.e. quit, fired or promoted) during a period of time. Decreasing agent attrition rates will ensure that your team will be more proficient with handling calls, navigating your business tools and up-to-date on the ins and outs of your company and product. This will increase their overall efficiency and effectiveness, customer satisfaction and their availability to field calls. Taken together, all the aforementioned factors will contribute to enhancing service level.

6) Enable agent call-backs

When waiting time is increasing and service level is declining, a quick, in the moment solution to increasing service level and customer satisfaction is to enable agent call-backs. Call center software that informs the caller of the anticipated wait time and provides them the option to opt out of waiting in the queue and receive a call-back from the agent can dramatically improve service level. When implementing this tool, it is important for managers to correctly classify the call (i.e. answered vs. abandoned) so their service level performance metric is accurate.

7) Enhance first call resolution (FCR)

Enhancing FCR can significantly increase service level. When callers are routed to the most appropriate agent to meet their needs and their agent resolves their issue without transferring them, not only is the customer more satisfied (and less likely to callback about the same issue) but the agents within the team will be more available to field calls. Both factors, more satisfied customers and more available agents, will enhance service level.

8) Enhance customer satisfaction

Customers that are not satisfied with the service they receive are more likely to callback about the same issue, to ask to be transferred to an agent with more experience or to ask to speak with a manager. All of the aforementioned scenarios can lead to an increase in average handle time as well as the volume of calls and if workforce management doesn’t take these factors into consideration, service level will decline. Thus, enhancing customer satisfaction can dramatically improve service level.