Zombies make great Halloween costumes. But, there’s no way you want a walking dead in your workforce, pacing around lifelessly, muttering inconsequential babble with business jargons and outdated information. And then there’s also a chance that the undead will affect the entire workforce in the long run.
This Halloween, we want you to meet the zombies that are sometimes found in call centers and how can a call center get rid of them. Let us begin from the most dangerous one.
Floor Manager Zombie
Symptoms: After being clawed in from all sides, some floor managers finally give up. It freezes their brains and leaves them incapable of thinking properly. One day the employees complained about not having enough work, while the next day, it’s a chaos out there. The work force is not being properly utilized, no employee is getting their annual leaves in an orderly manner and the manager just sits there with void in their eyes, not knowing how to create a proper schedule that allows optimum use of staff.
While we never faced them in person, these types of zombies are pretty dangerous, because often they are in charge of the workforce. And if top of the line is in such tumultuous state, one can easily understand that they are not far from a zombie apocalypse.
Solution: Since call centers work 24x7x365, it is difficult to manage the workforce smoothly. However, if the floor manager gets a little help from different workforce management software and strategies, they can come up with a fresh new way to monitor their agents, evaluate coverage for the estimated call volumes, update the schedule of agents who are off sick, and add training sessions to the quiet times of the day. Now that will bring order among the chaos and give the manager time to heal him.
Missing Parts Zombie
Symptoms: These zombies often walk around the office looking for missing bits of brains i.e. information. You will often find them looking blankly at numerous reports trying to find some relation between them.
For example – they are looking at separate reports on call volume; headcount and average handle time and still cannot find a relation between them. If such are the way supervisors act, how are they supposed to pass on key data to the management? And how will the management be able to take correct decisions based on these data? There’s no way a call center can survive with such zombies in the team.
Solution: With training on workforce management, the supervisors can learn to manage the team and create a call center performance report that shows the total number of agents, AHT, interaction volumes, service level, ASA, as well as percentage of interactions abandoned as forecasted vs. actual interaction abandoned.
The report will show that the calls are being handled efficiently, the SLA and KPIs are in place and the agent pool is satisfactory. Above all, the report should be easy to understand, because based on the report; the management decides the next course of action.
Disengaged Zombie – Agents
Symptoms: Every call center has them… you can see them chained to their desk, rotting their brain out as they wait for a training to be scheduled, waiting for the approved breaks, waiting for their week off… and so on. It’s a perpetual circle of wait with no real hope of getting out of this situation. And oh… they have a vacant expression.
Solution: However, with better workforce management and gamification process, it is possible to bring these agents back to life. It worked for us in the past.
Better workforce management can help call centers find the optimal working hours for each employee and arrange for the next shift to takeover when current agents are experiencing a burnout. It also allows them to allow or reject requests for leave depending on current workforce.
Basically, workforce management will empower employees to take control of their training and make the workforce a smarter one. On the other hand, gamification can increase employee engagement and cure the disengagement of the employees and save the workplace from zombie apocalypse.
With proper training, workforce management and gamification, a call center can bring their agents, managers and supervisors back to life and ensure a smooth operation. Trust us on this… we’ve been there and revived them back to life.
