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5 Tips to Get You Through Your Contact Center Budget Season

by Ric Kosiba, PhD., Bay Bridge Decision Technologies - June 22, 2011

5 Tips to Get You Through Your Contact Center Budget Season
By: Ric Kosiba

Many of the most important contact center decisions are made during budget season, such as:

• What are our service goals?
• How much training will we budget?
• Should we open or close centers?
• Which desktop technologies will we purchase?
• What reporting tools will we develop?
• How many agents will we hire?
• How much overtime will we allow?

The answers to these questions (and more) are all put into a plan, and in many organizations, this plan may as well be written in stone. Many of the decisions made during budget season have wide-ranging impact on operational effectiveness and efficiency, as well as agent performance and readiness.

Also, for many contact center managers, budget season represents the most frustrating and emasculating processes associated with their jobs. The planning give and take, the analysis and re-analysis of budget and staffing scenarios, creates a “hurry up and wait” process that may last months, and provide little real value. It can be very frustrating.

However, many forward-looking companies are now investing in technologies to help with their long-term planning. Here are a few steps that will make the process smoother while providing real value-added analysis to the process.

1. First, Ditch Your Erlang-Based Excel Nightmare

There are two requirements for developing a rock-solid contact center model: it must be fast, and it must be accurate. The majority of planning groups use an old Erlang-based spreadsheet to perform budget analysis. While Erlang is fast, it certainly is not accurate.

“New” tools, such as discrete-event simulation modeling, are now fast enough to use for planning purposes. It is time to make the switch by either developing your own models, or by purchasing a discrete-event simulation-based planning system.

The gain in accuracy will provide the confidence in your analysis, your plans, and more importantly, in you.

2. Optimize Your Hiring/Overtime Plan

Not that many years ago, planners developed employee schedules using spreadsheets. Now we all have powerful optimizers to more efficiently develop schedules.

Yet we still use those spreadsheets to determine when, where, and how many folks to hire. There are new tools, such as integer programming, that can tell you the least-cost hiring plan, and the best balance between hiring and over time plans.

By getting this right, we balance occupancy, costs, revenues, and service as we develop the least cost budget. We save a lot of time while saving a lot of money.

3. Provide Real Analysis (Answer What-Ifs Before You’re Asked)

If you’ve invested in your simulation technology, you are ready to take it out for a spin. Simulation models are the single best tool out there to answer what-if analysis. It’s what it is designed to do.

So get to it! You can answer great what-ifs in a few minutes:

• Should I offer a cross sell to my customers?
• What if I increase my training budget- what is the break-even improvement I need to justify the expense?
• Should I outsource more of my calls?
• What cost per call is associated with an increase in handle times?

By proactively answering the “question of the day” and answering it quickly, you become part of the decision making crowd. This is not a bad thing.


4. Determine Real Service Goals

The vast majority of contact centers use some form of service level or speed of answer goal to determine headcount and hiring plans. If you ask the center executive, they are likely to be flustered by the question: “How did you choose your service standard?”

This doesn’t have to be the case. Your simulation model will help you answer this question quickly. If you are selling products in your contact center, determining the profit maximizing service goal will allow you to manage your center as though it is your own business. For customer service functions, you can trade-off costs with service, and balance these factors with your corporate identity.


5. Get Home Before Midnight

Finally, while it is all too common for budget season to keep us at work till the wee hours, spending that time doing non-value added reporting does none of us any good. Get home! Enjoy the Fall!

Happy Budget Season, Everyone.

Ric Kosiba, PhD is a charter member of SWPP and co-founder and president of Bay Bridge Decision Technologies. He can be reached at EDK@BayBridgeTech.com or (410) 224-9883.






 
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