Call centre workforce planning and management
Optimise call centre rostering and shift scheduling to deliver game-changing improvements
Technology-enabled services from call centre workforce planning and management experts
Improve call centre efficiency
Increase call centre productivity
Enhance call centre performance
Our experience
Call centre workforce planning and management is key
You’ll know how important call centre workforce planning and management is to your customer service levels and brand perceptions.
But are your call centre shift patterns and scheduling practices staying ahead of changing demand and agent expectations?
Approaches to call centre workforce planning and management can be at the heart of persistent capacity and service issues, high labour costs and recruitment and retention challenges.
We’ll help you avoid these problems by further optimising call centre shift patterns, rostering and scheduling so they align with the needs of your business and its agents.
Looking to optimise call centre workforce planning and management?
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with a shift work expert who’ll give you valuable feedback and tips.
Call centre workforce planning and management benefits
Optimising call centre workforce planning and management can unlock a range of transformative benefits.
Improve call centre efficiency
Call centre workforce planning and management can release more capacity and value from your agents’ contracted hours.
This reduces the need for overtime and enables a more targeted use of contingent labour.
You can also improve call centre efficiency by ensuring call centre shift patterns and scheduling maximise utilisation and avoid over-capacity.
In some cases you could reduce total labour costs by 10% or more.
Increase call centre productivity
Ensuring your call centre shift patterns align to demand is vital to improving call centre productivity and avoiding agent underutilisation.
You could deliver a significant improvement in productivity metrics by fully optimising call centre workforce planning and management.
Effective call centre rostering and scheduling can also improve agent morale and reduce sickness absence, which can help boost call centre productivity further.
You could reduce sickness absence by up to 55%.
Enhance call centre performance
Adopting call centre workforce planning and management best practice can increase agent availability at times of peak demand.
Improving call centre shift patterns, rostering and scheduling will also give you the flexibility to ensure agent resource is available when it is most needed.
A modern flexible approach to call centre workforce planning and management can underpin agent satisfaction as well as recruitment and retention.
Being an employer with attractive call centre shift patterns will help you find and keep agents who are happy, healthy and delivering the highest levels of customer service.
Looking to improve call centre efficiency, productivity and performance?
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with a shift work expert who’ll give you valuable feedback and tips.
Call centre workforce planning and management support
Over the last three decades our experts have provided call centre workforce planning and management support to countless businesses and organisations.
The team will help you analyse your current call centre shift patterns and approach to rostering and scheduling to identify opportunities where rapid improvement can be delivered.
Analyse
Our sophisticated approach to data analytics will assess your current call centre workforce planning and management approaches and identify optimisation priorities.
Create
We’ll help you create call centre shift patterns that unlock huge benefits and ensure they are underpinned by robust call centre rostering and scheduling systems and policies.
Engage
We’ll help engage your agents to ensure your approach to call centre workforce planning and management meets their preferences and supports their health and wellbeing.
Call centre rostering software
In isolation call centre rostering software is not capable of supporting fully optimised call centre workforce planning and management.
Delivering maximum call centre efficiency, productivity and performance requires deep subject matter expertise, operational understanding and the ability to engage effectively with agents.
Rather than offering generic call centre rostering software, we’ve developed a range of proprietary call centre workforce planning and management tools that our experts use on your behalf to deliver improvement.
You’ll benefit from the increased visibility, efficiency and assurance provided by technology…but without the challenges posed by call centre rostering software contracts, systems integration, configuration and user support.
View
This data analytics tool quickly surfaces key call centre workforce planning and management insights and provides granular measurement, monitoring and reporting capabilities.
Plan
Enables the rapid generation of bespoke call centre shift pattern options whilst interactive visualisation tools support collaboration with your agents so rosters and schedules reflect their needs.
Hub
Enables efficient delivery of call centre agent sentiment and preference gathering, health and wellbeing programmes and training around call centre workforce planning and management best practice.
Schedule a call centre rostering software consultation
Book a free 30-minute consultation with a shift work expert to see how our solutions improve on traditional call centre rostering software.
Call centre workforce planning and management experts
We appreciate how time consuming, complex and sensitive call centre workforce planning and management can be.
optashift is home to the largest collective of experts in the UK with a three-decade long track record of delivering optimised call centre shift patterns, rostering and scheduling for a diverse range of businesses.
This includes outsourced and in-house call centres as well as public sector services such as NHS 111 and emergency dispatch.
Our experience
Want to speak to an expert about call centre workforce planning and management?
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation.
FAQ
Q: Do you support shift planning based on past call arrival pattern?
A: Yes. A key part of our approach to call centre workforce planning and management is to conduct detail demand and capacity analysis.
This ensures we identify how call centre shift patterns can be fundamentally aligned to demand and service level agreements.
Shift planning based on past call arrival patterns is an important component, but we also analyse a whole range of variables that impact agent availability and performance.
Q: What elements of contact centre workforce planning do you focus on?
A: Within contact centre workforce planning optashift principally focuses on call centre shift patterns, call centre rostering and call centre scheduling.
Our experts create ways of working that deliver the benefits outlined above but also feed into other areas of contact centre workforce planning.
For example we can help create diverse call centre shift patterns that appeal to certain demographics that you are targeting as part of your wider workforce strategy.
Q: What elements of contact centre workforce management do you focus on?
A: Within contact centre workforce management we principally focus on optimising key call centre rostering and scheduling systems and practices.
This includes improving policy and processes around shift work contracts, holiday management, shift swaps, shift bidding and a whole range of other important considerations.
We also help optimise call centre rostering software to ensure it is configured effectively and capable of supporting optimised contact centre workforce management.
Q: What call centre scheduling best practices do you use?
A: There is no one single approach to call centre scheduling optimisation, as every organisation and workforce is different.
We consider a wide range of factors around the call centre scheduling process which relate to operations, legislation and the specific workforce.
Ultimately the call centre scheduling best practices for your business will be the ones that effectively balance operational and performance considerations with the needs of your agents.
Q: Can you provide any examples of call centre shift patterns you have created?
A: We have created thousands of call centre shift patterns, but they are only relevant to the specific customer they were designed for (reflecting their demand, operating processes and agents’ preferences).
Any generic call centre shift pattern will need tailoring to your organisation.
You can find out more about shift patterns in the ‘Resources’ section of this website.
Q: Do you offer call centre rostering software?
A: optashift has a range of digital tools which help optimise the fundamentals of call centre workforce planning and management.
We do not offer our own version of ‘traditional’ call centre rostering software, with its associated time and attendance and payroll capabilities.
However, we are system agnostic and can work with you to establish what you need from call centre rostering software, identify appropriate vendors and support system implementation and configuration.
This will ensure your call centre rostering software can support a fully optimised approach to call centre workforce planning and management.
Schedule a call centre workforce planning and management consultation
Sometimes it’s easier just to ask an expert.
We offer a free, confidential and informal 30-minute consultation call with an optashift consultant who has over 20 years’ experience in call centre workforce planning and management.
During this call, the expert will use a structured checklist to provide a quick remote appraisal your approach to call centre shift patterns, rostering and scheduling.
They will then send a tailored and prioritised summary of recommendations to you within 24 hours of the call.
Use this form to secure a free call centre workforce planning and management consultation.