1b) What are the recommendations to increase agent's productivity?

A list of standard answers to customer questions in the form of ready-to-go sentences and paragraphs.

2) What are the most commonly uses of chat? e.g. assist customer during ordering process.

Assist Web-based customer service. Moving from self-service attempts to agent-assisted Web-based service.

3) What is the average length of chat?

It may differ by type of chat. Definitely different by type of chat, but in our benchmark, across industries, the average "length" of a chat session is 23 minutes. However, your agent is not bog down by this "seemingly" lengthy process as they are handling other customers in parallel.

4) What is the percentage of chat sessions which are followed-up with a call to the contact center?

Only 14% of chat sessions are follow-up with a call to the center. Chat is proving to be a very efficient and useful channel for both the company and its customers. About the brokerage industry eport, I do not understand how the reported average number of calls/shift/CSR is correct in comparison to the reported talk and wrap times. Often there is a discrepancy between these two metrics. The most plausible explanation is the "utilization" factor, namely what percent of the time that an agent is in their seat "ready" to handle phone calls, are they actually on the phone." Are there any call centers that send all their employees to lunch at the same time? Though a delightful concept, this is VERY rare. Instead, in some centers, employees are allowed to select certain other employees that the prefer to have lunch with so that the workforce management system can arrange for this luncheon timing. At one time we measured our agents by system time. Since we have moved to a Workforce Mgmt tool we now measure them by adherence to their schedule. This is the time that they are signed-in to ACD, available to take an inbound call while adhering to their actual scheduled shift times (start/stop, breaks, and lunch). What is the target measure for CSR Adherence in an inbound, order-entry call center? Great question¡­..from our experience with call centers, the target for adherence to assigned schedule is 95%. This key performance indicator (KPI) is mission critical to a call center that wishes to maintain an acceptable service level. Can you explain why there are such large discrepancies between the median and average talk times and after call work times for the Peer Groups and All Participants categories. There are large variances in our collected numbers when the groups are less specific in terms of the type of call that they handle. In a Peer Group, this variability is more limited.

Dear Dr. Jon, AT&T has a virtual rep "Ask Allie" on its corporate website http://www.consumer.att.com/ (see on the left screen, need help? Ask Allie). She is a "virtual rep". A customer types in text Q&As and a computerized virtual rep (aka our Knowledge Management System) supports the response. If she has difficulty answering, on the 3rd attempt, the virtual rep provides an e-mail form or chat session with a live rep (aka "Escalation"). My question: Are there any industry benchmarks or standards for virtual reps such as percent accuracy, percent customer satisfaction, cost savings, call avoided etc.? Great question. And, yes, there are now companies that supply these virtual reps as a product. These same companies have also done the research you are looking for.

One such company is called "Finali." They are located in Boulder, Colorado. I do not have their coordinates with me as I am on the road at the moment. Check out their Web site for the details.

Good luck.

Dr. Jon
Dear Dr. Jon, I have not been able to find this information. What is the average (for all industries) and the ideal/best practice for the staff to manager ratio in a contact center? Thank you! Peter Demaitre Peter, the ideal/best practice for the "staff to supervisor" ratio in contact centers across all industries is 17 to 1.

--Dr. Jon Anton
Answered 01/17/05 Do you have any information (benchmarks) in the Retail Call center industry the shows the cost per selling an item at brick and morter vs. the costs per selling an item in a call center setting? In otherwords a comparison of selling costs in retail industries that have brick and morter and catalog channel. Thank you. Good question, and yes we do have some best practices benchmarks in the retail industry for you to consider.

Since cost depends on the type of retail store, I would suggest a "unit" cost approach in our comparison:
1. Brick and mortar cost per item sold = 1,000 units
2. Telephone catalog channel cost per item sold = 100 units
3. Web site self-service cost per item sold = 1 unit

Fulfillment of these orders and the items sold is, of course, another story.
--Dr. Jon Do you have any metrics that would establish acceptable levels of agent absenteeism in a customer service contact center environment? Tough question since agent absenteeism can be a major hurdle in delivering acceptable service levels.

If I study our database of over 10,000 call centers, we see an average absenteeism of less than 5 percent, or about 10 days per year.

This number does vary quite a bit between industries and regions of the country.

If you have not already done so, I suggest you join our benchmarking community, and enter your performance numbers. This way you can get a more exact comparison with your peer group of call coenters.

Absenteeism is a challenge for all call centers.

Dr. Jon
Dr. Jon - I am interested in both captive and outsourced seat utilization statistics for the US & Canada, EMEA and India ... an average across industries (but if you have more detail on the differences between industries that would help too). Steve, this is a tough question and would require some intense cuts of our database. We have the details, but I suggest you contact MichaelFeinberg@BenchmarkPortal.com for more details on how to proceed.

But, I can give you a quick answer from our database for the US call center after a definition of the word "utilization":

Utilization is defined as "the percent of time that an agent is on the telephone with a caller as compared to the total time they are in their seat, connected to the ACD, and ready for a live caller.

"Utilization, across industries, for captive, in-house, in-bound customer service call centers in the US of A:

72% utilization

Utilization, across industries, for outsourced in-bound customer service call centers in the US of A:

87% utilization

Dr. Jon Anton
12/20/2004 Dr. Jon, What's the meaning of the FTE acronym, and what it means? Is it an external variable to calculate the number of paid hours or is a result from any other calculation in the call center calculation? Miguel Alberto P¨¢ez FTE stands for Full Time Equivalent. Contact centers usually have a mix of full time agents and part time agents. A full time agent equals one full time equivalent. A part time agent working 30 hours per week equals 75% of a full time equilavent. A part time agent working 20 hours per week equals 50% of a full time equivalent. The number of FTE's can not be determined from total paid hours, as total paid hours would eliminate absenteeism, leaves of absence and other non-paid activities. FTE's is a very important thing for contact center managers to understand and know, particularly when building staffing models and budgets. It is one of the data points captured in Purdue's benchmarking survey. Dr. Jon, I hope all is going well for you, the 3rd Wave Solutions team is very excited to be working working with BenchmarkPortal! My question is...have you or your team been able to identify a correlation between turnover rates and supervisor:agent ratios? It would seem logical that the more agents that ar on a team, the less coaching & development they would receive, which would lead to higher turnover. I would appreciate knowing if there was a clear relationship identified that could be referenced to contact center managers. Thank you! Dave Canham 3rd Wave Solutions Dave,
We have found a statistical significant relationship between turnover and the supervisor:agent ratio. The relationship is non-linear as indicated by the following:

1. between a ratio of 1:5 and 1:12, there is not much impact on agent turnover.

2. between a ratio of 1:12 and 1:20, there is a gradual increase in agent turnover.

3. between a ratio of 1:20 and above, there is a ever increasing impact on agent turnover.

-Dr. Jon Dr. Jon, We are looking for a workforce management software program for our 52 agent small virtual call center. We have a call center in Tampa (31 agents) and Miami (21 agents). Can you recommend one for this small of a center? We have ACD, IVR, Symposium and Nortel. Thank you Marian for your question.

I have asked Michael Feinberg, Director Business Development, to contact you. If there is anything else I can help you with please let me know.

Dr Jon Anton Hello Jon, We have a team currently working on a project to implement Aspect eWorkforce Management software which will give us the ability to do centralized scheduling of multi-skilled agents working across all of our Contact Centre locations. I appreciate if you can direct me to (non-vendor) sites with information on best practices for implementing multi-skilled agents, as well as where can our team find key learnings from other end-user experiences. Thanks Thanks for your question. We have an extensive database of call centers and I would be most happy to guide you in the above quest for information. I suggest you contact Michael Feinberg at MichaelFeinberg@BenchmarkPortal.com to set up a telephone conference so we can talk about the details.

Talk soon, I hope.

--Dr. Jon
Hi Dr.Jon, I would like to know what is the average call volume a day for a CSR in a world class telecom operator? And how long does a call last averagely? Many many thanks. Great question. Our data shows the following:

1. Calls per shift for a CSR in a top performing telecom call center is 94 calls.

2. Typical call is 3 minutes.

From this you can calculate the "utilization" factor, and this can be impacted by "occupancy." There is a lot to know about each of these important call center management metrics.

Hope this helps.

Dr. Jon
How do call centers handle their seasonal fluctuations in call volume? In another recent BenchmarkPortal One-Minute Survey we investigated how call centers handle their seasonal fluctuations in call volume. The results showed that the majority of call centers experience a volume increase that is between 20 and 30 percent above normal. We then asked how the centers handled their seasonal fluctuations. The responses indicated that 38 percent of the respondents have their agents work overtime to handle the seasonal fluctuations. Next in line were "other" and "hire seasonal agents," followed by "convert part time to full time," "outsource," and "bring on at home agents."

We asked for a recommendation of something that they had done that had worked well in handling their seasonal increase in call volume. After analyzing the open-ended responses we saw the following popular responses. How do i measure the extent of impact of absenteeism on SL . what are all the data that i would require to collate will it be on the lines of AHT Every missing agent that you had counted on being at work when you did your manpower loading, will decrease SL by 2%.
-Dr. Jon I am having a philosophical discussion with my new boss regarding the role of supervisors in my call center. We have 90 agents, four non-supervisory team leaders, who currently have 20-25 agents on their teams, and three supervisors. I think we need another supervisor, but my boss thinks I'm creating a bureaucracy. What is the benchmark for span of control? According to our benchmark research, the optimum span of control is one supervisor to 16 agents. Supervisors need time to monitor, coach, field questions, take escalated calls, track attendance and plan improvements. You might want to enter all your performance data into our Web site, and receive a report detailing your performance as compared to your Peer Group. This would bring out important performance gaps for your new boss to consider. I am hearing more and more about 'human factor' design regarding call centers. What is this and how does it apply to managing my call center? Human factors design has become more popular as management focuses on the seemingly "little" things that can often make a big difference in productivity. Human factors is an engineering discipline in which the prime thesis is that the "human-to-machine" interface is critical in applying effective technology solutions, and maximizing ROI. The call center agent, or knowledge worker, must use complex technology to consistently deliver excellent service. A few examples of factors that can be researched for design changes include the following: the keyboard (size, shape, layout, etc.), the screen (color, size, height, angle, etc.), screen layout (location of fields, color-coding of fields, pop-up windows, etc.) and many, many more. The human factors specialist focuses on those elements of the human physiology and psychology that can impact performance. Major improvements in agent effectiveness and efficiency have been realized by human factors re-engineering call centers technology.
I am hearing more and more about moving calls "off shore" to reduce costs. What does your research offer on this issue? On average 60% of the operational cost of a call center is tied up in human resources, and just finding great agents that can read, write and speak English articulately is becoming tougher and tougher. Countries that were part of the English Commonwealth, like India, British Guyana, and others are stepping in to take up the slack. Many citizens of these countries benefit from having an excellent education that includes reading, writing, and speaking English fluently, but they cannot find jobs opportunities due to the lack of industrialization of their countries. With the globalization of telephone networks with the resulting low cost of long distance calls,call centers in these remote areas have become financially quite viable.

Handling e-mail, especially technical support email, is a great way to begin. I am hearing more and more about moving calls off shore to reduce costs. What does your research offer on this issue? On average, 60% of the operational cost of a call center is tied up in human resources, and just finding great agents who can read, write and speak English articulately is becoming tougher and tougher. Countries that were part of the English Commonwealth, like India, British Guyana and others, are stepping in to take up the slack. Many citizens of these countries are receiving an excellent education. With the globalization of telephone networks resulting in lower long-distance costs, call centers in these remote areas have become quite viable financially. Handling e-mail from these countries, especially technical support e-mail, is a great way to begin. I am interested in learning the average agent population of in-house call centers in the US, and the same for outsourced call centers (mainly doing telemarketing and customer support). -Ritesh Srivastava Ritesh, the average number of workstations for an in-house call center in the US is 78. The average for outsourced centers in the US is 250. There are about 100,000 call centers in the US if you include inbound plus outbound centers and internal help desks.
--Dr Jon I am responsible for the Business Development of a call centre (financial sector). I am trying to find ways to maximise the agents performance and occupancy ratio during outbound sale campaigns. We usually have 5 people working on a campaign and we use predictive dialling. Is the agent occupancy ratio better if they: 1. take their breaks (20 min) in turns 2. take their breaks all of them at once? In an outbound, tele-sales centre it is much easier to let agents take breaks together. The socialization is important to them and can motivate and energize them when they return. I pick number 2 from my experience.

Dr. Jon
I manage a small call center (25 agents) for an insurance company in southeastern Indiana. Our CSR's often have post call work that takes them away from answering inbound calls. We have struggled with finding a meaningful way of measuring these activities and the time they take. We believe some of this work is related to training, or lack of available information. Do you have any suggestions for effectively and efficiently tracking post call work that might help us to better understand the resources needed to staff for this work? Are there any working models that you are aware of that might help us see into this "black hole"? Deb Schebler I would begin by asking each CSR to document the "type" of activities required after the call, for example reasons like, a) claims correspondence, b) claims paperwork completion, c) claims investigation, etc.

I would then create a frequency report of these activities to determine the major time "hogs." I would then determine if a "less skilled" (i.e., less expensive) clerk could handle some or all of these activities. I would investigate if there is software available to minimize the agent's time spent on these post call activities.

And finally, I suggest you benchmark your call center's post call work time against a peer group of insurance call centers through the Purdue performance database. By benchmarking, you will better "see" if your amount of post call work time is normal, or is it really too big, and therefore needs your attention. I'm CEO of Revonet. We have a 100-person call center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, specializing in outbound B2B lead generation. We'd like to improve our productivity. Do you have experience in this sector? Our web site is www.Revonet.com Thank you Jeff for your question.

I have asked Michael Feinberg, Director Business Development, to contact you. If there is anything else I can help you with please let me know.

Dr Jon Anton
I'm trying to figure out an appropriate percentage of my budget to allocate to overtime expenses to handle calls during peak times rather than staff up for the peaks. Matt Beirne I am not aware of a specific article that addresses overtime issues in call centers. However, from our work in benchmarking call centers, I would suggest an average budget allotment of 10% to 15% for overtime. Almost all centers encourage overtime for handling unanticipated peak call volumes. Too much overtime may be detrimental, causing burnout and increased turnover. In calculating agent annual turnover, should we include part-time employees? Most companies in our database report the turnover of full-time agents and part-time agents and part-time agents separately. Mixing them could be confusing. Is there any data on the cost of answering a customer's inquiry by phone, e-mail, fax, regular mail and through on-line self-help? We have polled call center managers and Web masters, and have averaged their results across industries as follows: a) telephone=$3 to $4 per inquiry, b) e-mail = $15 to $20 per inquiry, c) fax = $25 to $35 per inquiry, d) regular mail = $25 to $35 per inquiry, e) Web site = $0.50 to $1 per inquiry. Our center is looking at desk sharing for all part timers that fit together from a schedule perspective. HR seems to think this will be viewed as non employee friendly, where Resource Planning views it as a "meeting us halfway" to saving overhead costs. Is there any type of case study out there to show either side who might be right? This is a very common situation, that is never easy implement without some "pain." In a recent benchmark study on this issue, we found that over 50% of call centers in our database do have desk sharing. Frequently, this is limited to part timers and/or agents that are new to the job. Having "your own" desk is sometime a way to add benefits to keep agents longer.

HR and Resosurce Planning are both right. It takes strong leadership to convince agents that the "meeting us halfway" is the right thing to do. I think if other HR issues are "on target", i.e., compensation, hours of work, great frontline supervisors, then desk sharing becomes less of an issue.

Dr. Jon
The industry is consumer products- How can I translate a target audience size that will be reached into how many contacts it may generate calls, email, etc. so I can think about staffing a call center? What drivers are usually used to determine possible calls? Joe,
I have asked Michael Feinberg, Director Business Development, to contact you. If there is anything else I can help you with please let me know.

Dr. Jon Anton
Typically in the call center one would schedule for daily business using some type of scheduling tool. My question is what is the "industry" stance on staffing up for outages? I suspect the answer is that we in the call center business should not "overstaff" for outages, but I need an official statement. In most call centers, one would schedule for daily business using some type of scheduling tool. Over ten vendors supply such ingenious scheduling tools. Outages are completely unplanned and can not be statistically forecasted. Therefore, standard manpower scheduling tools do not work for such random events. Instead, most call centers have some type of "business recovery" plan in place for business outages caused by weather, fire, theft, and other natural disasters. Usually, this does not include extra staffing, but instead includes contracts with companies that provide business or disaster recovery through the availability of stand-by agents at alternate locations.

-Dr. Jon (answered 05/18/05) We are a utility company with a 24x7 call center. I have 90 agents and four (non-supervisory) team leaders, who currently have from 20 to 25 agents on their teams. In addition, I have three supervisors. I believe we need another lead. The span is far too wide for the leads to effectively field questions, take escalated calls, mentor, coach and track attendance and availability. My boss thinks I am creating a bureaucracy. -Kate Tallmadge Our benchmark research indicates that the typical team leader would mentor between 15 and 20 people at most. You're definitely much too lean. The best way to convince your boss that you are not creating a bureaucracy is to benchmark all of your performance metrics with other utilities of the same size (peer group). If you are performing substantially below average compared to your peer group of utilities, you may find it much easier to justify more team leaders.
--Dr. Jon We are considering closing our call center during lunchtime in an effort to better manage the peaks and valleys of incoming calls. We are looking for a benchmark to determine if we should pursue this initiative in our call center. There is not one single company in our database that reports closing during the lunch hour. Customers need access to information at all times, especially during the business day, when working customers often call during their lunch hours. We are considering Home Based Representatives to help save costs. Do you have information on Costs (labor and benefits), Processes, Problems and Issues with this? Also could you recommend some articles or web sites on this issues? I already have an article you wrote on this issues from ICCM Weekly. Todd,
Home-based agents are a very realistic and exciting new source of low-cost "people power" for today's call, chat, and e-mail channels. I am in the processing of completing a white paper that focuses on enabling physically disabled Americans to work from home. This paper will be available by the end of July and then posted on our Web site.

-Dr. Jon
Answered 7/11/2005 We are expanding our business overseas in the next 18 mos. We have an in-house call center that answers approx. 1500 calls each day. I'm not sure what the best solution is for going overseas. Should I look at expanding our hours (and our bi-lingual skill set agents) to have our own agents take the calls, or should I explore the option of opening our own center in another country, or should I consider overseas outsourcing options? And where can I find some helpful call center resources overseas? Thank you Jill for your question. I have asked Kamal Webb, Director of Benchmarking Services, to contact you. If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know.
-Dr. Jon Anton We currently have an average of nine agents reporting to one supervisor. Is this good enough? Have you found that there is an optimum ratio of agents to supervisors? In our database of call centers, the ratio of agents to supervisors that produces the most effective service in the most efficient way is 14 agents to one supervisor. It looks like you have room for improvement. We currently have an average of nine agents reporting to one supervisor. Is this good enough? Have you found that there is an optimum ratio of agents to supervisors? In our database of call centers, the ratio of agents to supervisors that produces the most effective service in the most efficient way is 14 agents to one supervisor. It looks like you have room for improvement. What do you see as an optimum staffing model for a large company's call center with regard to the correct number of agents per site? When we compare our multi-view call center performance index (MPI) with the size of call centers, we find that the most efficient and effective call centers (i.e., those with the highest MPI), are between 250 and 500 agents. The MPI dips at both the very small call center and the very large call center. What is a Call Center's average of calls vs. applications in their Loan By Phone department? Average calls per loan application is about three to one. What is the industry standard for call volume forecasting accuracy at the daily level? At the monthly level? Daily = 96% accurate

Monthly = 83% What is the interest, by contact center managers, in best practices relating to e-mail management? We have noticed an ever-increasing interest by contact center managers in best practices related to e-mail management. For that reason, we have launched major initiatives in e-mail benchmarking. The majority of e-mail is responded to in less than 6 hours. This is in spite of the fact that when we survey consumers, they are quite happy to have their e-mail answered in 24 hours, or even more. Regarding e-mail quality, the majority of managers seem to sample the e-mail that was sent and perform their quality check there. We would encourage a greater focus on ensuring that each e-mail is answered in one e-mail, i.e., "first time final," as we all strive to do in our telephone calls. Would you be willing to share with me your high-level thoughts on what you think a realistic Adherence to Schedule expectation should be for agents in an in-bound call center who also do a mix of back-office work during the day. We're an in-bound Electric Utility call center (union shop). Our approx. 200 agents mostly work 8 to 5 with an hour for lunch and two scheduled 10 min breaks. They're on the phones all day Mondays, and usually have 1 to 2 hours of non-phone activities scheduled Tues thru Friday. We're an Aspect shop: ACD, IVR, CTI and eWFM w/Real Time Adherence. We also use the Witness eQuality system. We are simply trying to promote a "quantitative" ATS metric: total hours available to the customer (in Aspect terms that would be the total of Talk, Hold, Wrap and Available for the next call) divided by the total Scheduled ACD hours out of the eWorkForce Management system. Our center is consistently at or around 87% adherence, and I'd like to get to around 95%. Is that realistic? How does that compare to other centers who may perform a like mix of work? First of all, you have a wonderful array of enabling technologies to run a world class contact center...congratulations. In answering your question, let's not confuse adherence to schedule (ATS) with Agent Occupancy, and/or Agent Utilization.

ATS is simply the individual Agent's adherence to exactly the schedule that you give them for a particular shift. It might include phone time, classroom time, back office time, and the like...ATS for the telephone time is very easy to track with your Aspect system...you are essentially tracking to see that the agent is in their seat at the exact time required by the Aspect WFM scheduler...namely, do they arrive on time, do they take their breaks on time, do they return from breaks on time, and the like...union shop or non-union shop, you should be able to achieve a better than 95% ATS.

Occupancy, by contrast is the percent of time that an Agent is in their seat and connected to the Aspect ACD and ready to handle inbound phone calls (availability), as a percentage of their total time at work (total paid-for shift time). If their only job is telephone work, you should be able to achieve an occupancy percent of 85 to 90%...much more than 90%, and you will begin to see Agent burnout and turnover.

A third key performance indicator (KPI) is called Utilization, (again available from your switch) and it indicates the percent of time an Agent is on the telephone with a customer as a percentage of their being in their seat connected to the ACD (available). This key performance indicator is controlled by proper management in forecasting calls and scheduling Agents. You should strive to achieve 95% utilization of your phone agents.