Call centres are things that most of us have experience of either working in or engaging with, e.g when calling to complain about your phone bill being wrong or to get advice about your bank account. However, very few of us actually know how they operate and what they actually do. This is why we have put together this list of interesting facts about call centres.
Staff Account for Around 70% of Operational Costs
This figure shows that staff are a key asset of a call centre. It is these people who have the real impact on the customer. Investing in the right people with the right training will provide the right results for a call centre. Another big cost for call centres is energy. To try and bring this soaring cost under some control, head over to the Utility Bidder website to compare tariffs and get advice.
Staff Are Challenging
Where there are large groups of people working together, management becomes trickier and there will be problems. Call centres have a reputation for high turnover and absenteeism. These challenges make managing the centre especially difficult when you think that the managers have to forecast and plan their resources very tightly against predicted call volumes. If a centre is under resourced, then queues will form, customers will become dissatisfied and advisors will be put under even more pressure.
Monday is the Busiest Day of the Week
We have all had the weekend to sort our bills or decide on that holiday, so now we are back to our normal week, it is time to pick up the phone and call the call centre. If you need to call a call centre, try to do it on any day but a Monday. Also, Monday contact volumes can be even higher if the call centre was shut at the weekend. This, paired with the fact that contact centres often report absenteeism to be higher on Monday, can make Monday mornings in the call centre even more challenging.
Most Customers Call Between 10am and 12pm Than at any Other Time
This is because those calling have either got into work and are settled into their day, so will make their personal calls, or they have returned home after doing the school run and are getting on with the chores they need to do. As well as daily patterns, call centres have to be aware of general patterns in contact volumes at an hourly rate as well. In fact, as a lesser known principle is that 40 percent of the hourly calls are handled within the first 15 minutes of the hour. In the half an hour after this you will likely receive just 30 percent of your hourly calls, while the final 30 percent will come into the contact centre in the final quarter of an hour. So, the hourly pattern in call volumes will likely look like the below. This is because customers tend to wait to the hour to make a call.