Meet Jane, the co-founder of a start-up that makes software for independent designers. Last year, her business received a round of seed funding and, as a result, its volume of orders quadrupled. Although this growth was positive, Jane was left struggling to keep up with customer (and internal) communications; processing new orders; investigating logistical issues; optimizing marketing strategies; and testing and updating product features. There was also no time left to visit clients and hear their needs.
Jane’s CEO observed the bandwidth problem and implemented a solution: She formed an internal call center and hired and trained a team of 10 agents to support it. Soon, agents were placed on calls with clients and within a month the agents had streamlined pending projects; followed up on account receivables; and reached out to new clients via cold calls. This surge in productivity helped Jane focus on key accounts and core business functions.
This story demonstrates that call centers help companies improve overall service levels. To achieve and maintain a good holistic service level, however, it is imperative for call centers to improve and maintain their internal service levels, too.
This week we present a new installment in our “Pitfalls” series which looks at common mistakes made when measuring or interpreting contact center metrics. Occupancy rate basically measures how “busy” call center agents are when they are at work.
In our on-going effort to demystify call center metrics, let’s take a look at “occupancy rate”. This is basically a measure of how “busy” call center agents are when they are at work. It is sometimes referred to as “utilization”. You might think a simpler measurement like “call per hour” would answer this same question. But as is often the case with call centers, things get complicated quickly.
