Needs of Smaller Contact Centers

Long thought of as cost centers, senior management now understands that the quality of all customer touch points is critical to achieving revenue, profitability, and customer care objectives. As the voice of the company, agents are uniquely positioned to strengthen or weaken brand loyalty and corporate image. In many cases, the agent is the primary or only human contact that customers have with the enterprise. If the interaction is favorable, the customer is likely to remain a customer. If unfavorable, the company stands to lose a valuable customer and have to expend resources to replace the lost customer. There can be no compromise on call quality, smaller businesses need to compete with larger organizations with vastly greater personnel and financial resources. The rule of thumb is that 20 percent of customers account for 80 percent of sales. In a smaller business the loss of even a single large customer can have serious financial consequences to small businesses.


Reports can be generated manually. However, at some point these methods become unworkable. Live monitoring of call center service operations consumes hours of unproductive supervisor time listening for calls worthy of evaluation. Spreadsheets and inexpensive scheduling software work reasonably well for static environments but call centers are anything but static. Changing vacation schedules, keeping track of time-off requests, accounting for non-call time, and making intra-day adjustments based on call flow becomes a near-impossibility. Manual reporting is another time hog.

There is no magic cut-off point - much depends on the nature and call volume of the center - but industry experts generally concur that after 20 - 30 agents manual methods are simply no longer effective. A few years ago even the smallest full-featured quality monitoring systems; workforce management systems, predictive dialers, and CRM software were priced in the high five or low six figures. The available solutions were built on platforms designed to accommodate several hundred agents and could not cost-effectively scale down to the needs of the smaller and mid-size call centers.

However, in just the past three years vendors have recognized the opportunity to address this largely under-served market with solutions that can be cost-justified. There are also more acquisition options today. Hosted solutions, while still in their infancy, provide a pay-as-you go alternative. Leasing provides comparable monthly costs to hosting without the need for substantial capital outlays. Paying for the applications over the life of the equipment protects against obsolescence and permits the call center to finance the acquisitions out of generated savings.

Call centers are mission critical to organizations and industry of all sizes. In a world where competitors can be anywhere the quality of customer care delivered by both formal and informal call centers is one place where a smaller company can readily outshine its larger competitors. Sites of 150 agents or less comprise 95 percent of all the world's call centers and employ over half of all agents. Most indications are that small call centers make up a growing segment of the call center industry.

All call centers regardless of size have the same basic needs of call center services to drive customer satisfaction, grow revenues, control costs and capture and convey valuable market intelligence. For too long, the industry has not paid enough attention to the unique needs of this large and fast growing market segment. Products were too complex and too costly. This meant that smaller call centers had to make do with slow and efficient manual processes. Fortunately, vendors now offer integrated suite solutions with just the right combination of functionality, capacity, features, and for smaller businesses. The suite approach offers significant advantages over purchasing solutions one at a time.

Special Challenges of Smaller Call Centers

Sites of 150 agents or less comprise 95 percent of all the world's call centers and employ over half of all agents. Most indications are that small call centers make up a large segment of the call center industry. This makes sense because large companies are moving to multi-site operations and fast growing mid-size companies of 100 - 500 employees are creating new call centers.

Businesses that have invested in contact centers have two fundamental areas they need to optimize-their sales and their people. Sales and call center service business models are reinforced by an investment in an integrated sales and service application suite. Many contact centers have seen the benefit of bringing both initiatives together in a real-time platform. All call centers regardless of size have the same basic needs to drive customer satisfaction, grow revenues, control costs and capture and convey valuable market intelligence. While under 150-agent call centers have the same missions there are some significant challenges.

Calling patterns tend to have greater volatility

Calling patterns in smaller call centers tend to exhibit greater variation than in very large call centers. Sharp spurts can be followed by periods of relative inactivity. This complicates the manager's ability to develop work schedules that are both cost-effective and maintain desired service levels. Smaller call centers rarely rely on outsourcers or home agents to handle overflows. They must be able to accommodate call spikes internally. One option is to build work rules into the scheduling process that help assure that call coverage mimics call flow. Workforce management software is designed to consider the multidimensional problem of building schedules and forecasts in highly dynamic environments and allows multi-tasking managers to spend more time doing what they do best - coaching and motivating agents.

Everyone is a generalist

Agents can be expected to handle multiple situations, like taking orders, tracking deliveries, answering billing questions, addressing quality issues, and even providing basic technical assistance. This has recruitment and training implications. Some candidates will welcome the challenges that go with job diversity. Others will be more comfortable knowing one or two things very well. Smaller call centers rarely have the luxury of extended training periods and experts dedicated to training. Developing mentors that who can help coach new agents is a great way to help out busy supervisors while at the same time preparing promising individuals for greater responsibility.

Limited information technology (IT) support

A large enterprise will have a substantial staff of IT professionals. A smaller organization may have a handful of people whose primary interest is in supporting what they perceive to be the most mission-critical systems in the enterprise - production, inventory control, order management, and accounting. In many cases there may not be an IT department at all. The organization will contract with a third-party to handle all IT needs. In the former case, the idea of supporting sophisticated call center applications with which they have had little prior experience is not always welcome.

Attrition, absenteeism and adherence deviations have outsize impact on call center service levels

Absenteeism and schedule deviations can wreak havoc on smaller centers' service levels and agent morale. Jeff Theiler, call center manager for Hancock Bank put it this way, "When you're in a smaller call center, if you lose two or three people, you're just hammered." That's easy to understand. In a call center of 30 agents, if three go to lunch or take breaks at the same time occupancy for that time period falls by 10% and service levels deteriorate. Large call centers account for "shrinkage" by maintaining sufficient staff to maintain service levels at all times. In a smaller call center hiring additional personnel may not be an option.

Insufficient time for coaching agent evaluations

Evaluating, coaching, and developing agents is the most important part of the supervisor's job. Smaller call centers that rely on manual systems could relieve supervisors of time wasting activities by investing in modern quality monitoring systems. Take evaluations for example. In order to perform just one monthly evaluation per agent a supervisor will typically live monitor an agent for at least 35 minutes to find just one call worthy of evaluation. Modern quality monitoring software can quickly search through thousands of hours of recorded voice looking for calls that meet specific criteria; such as extended handle times, long holding periods, and multiple transfers. Supervisors can spot trends and indicators that highlight agent's strengths and areas that need improvement. Especially effective interactions can be saved as model calls for use in training and coaching sessions.

Retention is critical

Agent retention is a challenge in every call center but especially in smaller call centers. Large call centers have other resources to pick up the slack and have already forecasted in some level of shrinkage. Because there is often a higher spirit of camaraderie in smaller centers the loss of an agent can adversely impact morale as well as service levels. In smaller companies customers get to know and like their agents, like favorite tellers at the local bank branch. This is an advantage smaller companies want to leverage. In massive call centers customers may never speak with the same agent twice.

While turnover is a fact of life there are actions management can take to make the agent's job more satisfying and rewarding. Smaller call centers often have more flexibility to grant time-off requests. They can adjust hours to help agents balance work and family responsibilities. Incentive compensation and contests don't require five levels of management approval. There are more options for creating career paths.