First, we need to understand the fundamentals of Resource Planning and how they interconnect. Without grasping the basics of any subject, attempting to guide or seek technological solutions often doesn’t yield the desired results.
In reality, the foundations of resource planning are quite simple. Moreover, these fundamentals have continued to operate unchanged for years.
Resource Planning relies on a cycle as follows:
Today, a Call Center utilizes a wide variety of channels: Inbound, chat, email, or outbound… Regardless of the channel variety, you can maintain planning within the same cycle. The cycle remains consistent even if time or industry changes. All you need to do is know each step in the cycle and trust your plan.
Forecasting
Forecasting constitutes the first step of Resource Planning. Before you start planning, you must predict what you’ll be planning for. You can achieve this by using past data and following current trends. You should also incorporate certain industry-specific factors into this data. These could include campaigns, special local events, or sales figures.
You must create a separate forecast for each contact point.
Scheduling
After forecasting for each contact point, we must calculate the number of agents needed to meet these predictions. There are several criteria we need to consider during this calculation. While these vary by contact point, they share fundamental commonalities: service level, efficiency, and answer speed are among them.
Additionally, we must place the correct number of agents into the right shifts. This is because our primary goal in planning is to provide excellent customer service during every interval.
Monitoring
After creating the forecast and shift plan, we must measure their success. We should evaluate this in real-time. Therefore, we must have constant control over the service level, absenteeism rates, and talk times.
Review
Naturally, we must trust the plan we’ve made. However, there’s something we need to know: we are making a forecast and plan for the future. And the future may not always unfold as we expect. In such cases, there’s no need to stubbornly stick to our plan. When necessary, we should step back from our plan and take time to re-evaluate. If needed, we can revise our forecasts or plans.
Things might not go smoothly at every one of these steps. An unexpected campaign might launch, or many agents might not log in. All of these can cause planning to fail. However, an experienced planner should be prepared for all scenarios and incorporate potential setbacks into their calculations.
Reasons Why Resource Planning Fails
Resource planning can fail for many reasons. However, the most common reasons for failure in call centers are as follows:
Situations Affecting Forecasts
If you base your forecasts and planning solely on internal company situations, you increase your margin for error. While doing so, you must also consider what affects the agents’ region and your industry.
For example, weather conditions are a factor that influences many of your forecasts. During heavy snowfall, agents’ commute to the company might be disrupted, especially if not all agents work from home. Furthermore, if you are planning for a transportation company or a sector that delivers via courier, heavy snow and rain will cause various disruptions. This situation will lead to more customer contacts than expected.
So, do planners pay attention to this when making plans?
A good planner should actually be prepared for all kinds of situations. Therefore, when making a forecast, after making the ideal estimate, they should also work on second and third scenarios. And for each scenario, they should define an action plan.
Not Considering Agent Requests and Absenteeism Rates
We must not forget that call center agents are human beings. They have personal lives as well as work lives. On some special days, they might not want to work and may request leave. If we don’t consider their requests and include them in the shift plan, there’s a high probability they won’t log in. In this case, our plan will fail.
Moreover, call centers are places where a large number of people work. And absenteeism will inevitably occur every day. We should closely monitor call center metrics and know the absenteeism rates. When planning, we must include these rates in the agent requirement.
Unnecessary Interference with Planning
A planner doesn’t get upset when there’s a mistake in their plan. A planner remains calm when a disruption occurs in the call center. A planner has an analytical mind. They have the ability to create alternative action plans to fix many setbacks.
So, when does a planner get upset?
“The number of people waiting suddenly jumped to 20. Those waiting for chat reached 50. In situations like these, call center managers or operations managers immediately panic. We must cancel all breaks! Let’s cancel training for agents currently in training! Waiting customers need to be handled urgently!”
This scenario definitely happens in every call center.
But sometimes, the planner plans for this knowingly. They plan for the call center to be busy at certain times of the day, for a certain number of calls to be missed. In fact, the planner’s exact plan was to see those waiting calls. Because when there’s a 100% call answer rate, it means agents are working inefficiently.
Things might get better when agents return from breaks or when agents from the next shift log in.
A good planner should know how to react to immediate situations. An emergency plan should always be in their pocket. But knowing when to use it is crucial. Therefore, during immediate spikes in volume, they should remain calm and observe for at least 5 minutes without taking any action. They should analyze the trend of the volume well. If you take immediate action during short-term deviations, you might negatively impact many call center criteria.
These action plans should always be left to the planner.
If you are planning for a new industry, you might make faulty actions at first. No problem. However, this skill will develop over time.
Proper Review
A planner always needs time to review their plan. Do you have enough time during the day for analysis?
If you don’t have enough time due to workload, you won’t be able to see the disruptions in your plans. This will harm the company you work for in the long run. You might be employing more agents than needed, or customers might not work with you again because their requests weren’t met on time.
Make time for evaluation.
Also, when evaluating, you must think completely impartially and analytically. This is the only way you can understand where you made a mistake. To solve the problem, you need to understand the problem.
Taking Average AHT (Average Handle Time)
Customers might call the call center for very different reasons throughout the day. Some operations might take a long time, while others might just get information and hang up.
At the end of the day, the call center’s AHT comes out.
If you consider the daily average AHT when calculating the number of agents, you will most likely produce a failed plan.
If you want to create a plan with a low deviation rate, you must first get to know the call center. When calculating, you should use average talk times according to intervals.
AHT times never follow a straight line in any call center. They are high at certain times of the day and low at others. These times also vary depending on whether the agents are experienced. If new agents are logging in during the morning hours, you should know that the time will be higher. If your customers talk longer when they call in the evening because they have no other business, you should know that too.
In Conclusion
Call center resource planning has 4 stages: forecasting, planning, monitoring, and reviewing.
The likelihood of making mistakes in the first two stages is very high. This is because you are forecasting something unknown and planning based on that forecast. However, as a resource planner, you must be prepared for all kinds of situations. You must also ensure that you consider all factors.
You should know the calculation techniques that reduce your chances of making mistakes in these stages. These primarily include Erlang and workforce calculation.
To be a good resource planner, you should keep your chances of making mistakes low in the last two stages. This is because the last two stages require analytical thinking. You must make objective evaluations. You should see your mistakes as factors that lead you to the right path. Furthermore, you should not let non-planners interfere with your work.