Friday, October 15, 2010

Top 10 Buzzwords Sounding Important in Call Center Scheduling and Call Center Staffing

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The last time you heard from us was when we discussed top 11 buzzwords of Call Center Outsourcing Services. This time, we are going to take a trip down to call center scheduling and staffing and understanding what are the top ten keywords that keep it alive and kicking?



1) Workforce optimization (WFO): A technology consisting the tools and weapons of workforce, efficiency and performance management to keep everything under check such as quality monitoring, liability assets, speech analytics and recording.

2) Shrinkage: The percentage of time in which no calls or productivity is reported by agents like calling in sick, vacation time, leaves and training.

3) Erlang B: A modeling formula used in call center scheduling to assess the workforce and number of call joints required to answer calls during a one-hour period.

4) Erlang C: This formula is used to calculate delays or wait times during calls by an agent. Erlang C is based on the factors like number of agents at given time, number of callers waiting to get through and average time to respond.

5) Automatic Call Distributor (ACD): A telephonic facility to manage incoming calls based on the previously stored preferences and handling instructions for caller.

6) Trunk: A trunk is a connective device to handle multiple signals and switching centers. These signals could be voice, data, image or videos.

7) Auxiliary time: It is a time when call center agent is not working and also not taking the calls. This can also be referred as unavailable time.

8) 24-7 call center: 24/7 call center is always on the go 24 hours, seven days and 365 days a year. They operate in two or three shifts rotation as per the convenience.

9) Call volume: The flow or numbers of calls received by call center at given point of time. It can vary as per the demand or season.

10) Night shift: Generally referred as Graveyard shift it is difficult for both the management and agents. Establishing biological clocks at unusual time demands lots of patience and focus.

Monday, October 11, 2010

The Fantastic Five Benefits of Call Center Operations

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The rapid boom in call center outsourcing services has let many organizations hire them at very competitive rates. Call Center Outsourcing Services save money and relieve the burden of your in-house team by taking up broad range of work from call center to help-desk operations. Here are some of the advantages which can be utilized by the big wigs of the market and small players alike.



1. If you have a company that is expanding or experiencing huge growth in customer database and surprisingly, finding customer services very challenging; call centers can help you out.

Call centers are best mediums to reach your customers. If you have launched a product, you want to launch a new service or want to reach a group that is remotely based, want to provide technical support to your customers, call centers are the way. They offer you services at unbeatable prices and unparallelled quality.

2. Outsourcing can help your company to reduce its operational costs and setting up an infrastructure for hundreds and thousands of employees and later on, doling money on their salaries, P.F and other surplus charges. When ever you need to upgrade any IT tool, you just need to talk the contact point at call center and its done. You save money of buying new software, equipment or hiring a new technical division for it.

3. If your team experience flexible call volumes that is sometimes less and sometimes more or at odd hours, then Call Center Outsourcing Services can the best way to offer technical and non technical support to your customers. You can take a customized plan of call center services or change it whenever you think the load of call is more than the habitual ones for particular season.

4. Outsourcing opens up new avenues for business development for SMEs. Small and medium enterprises which need to develop their set-up but are short of funds, can hire call center companies to start with and build a proper rapport with customers. They can also outsource their internal operations and HR processes. In the same way call center outsourcing services is beneficial for the IT operations of larger businesses. They can save on testing, learning and development processes of technologies. They can also save on the in-house training costs, they would otherwise impart to their employees.

5. The added advantage of call center is flexible business shifts. Regardless of which time zone you are operating in, you can hire them. Call centers work on 24/7 basis round the year. They also provide you multilingual support and provide services in two or three shifts as needed.