Welcome to Dear Dave, our new video series showcasing how Intraday Automation can transform your contact centre!
In this first episode, our Solution Consultant, Dave Preece explains how you can re-invest hundreds of hours’ worth of idle time into training for your agents.
Shift inflexibility is one of the biggest challenges for contact centre planners.
Agents are typically contracted to do a set number of hours and fixed shifts each week – but as we know, customer calls vary in duration and frequency.
Discrepancies arise when the shifts that agents work and the level of work that needs to be completed are mis-matched, creating pockets of idle time throughout the day – known as shift inflex.
There are several hurdles to overcome to utilise this idle time more productively:
- Planners know that these pockets of time exist – but it’s been impossible to be quick and agile enough to gain access to them, so that they can be used for something more productive, like training and coaching.
- No matter how quick Real Time teams are, it’s incredibly difficult to harvest enough of that spare time for your business to make real use of it.
In this episode, Dave shows how easy these barriers are to overcome, using QStory. In his demo, you can see how he manages to re-invest 180 hours’ worth of idle time into mandatory training for 300 agents.
Here’s a re-cap of how QStory can help you make the most of idle time in your call centre!
Better visibility
The Heads Up Display dashboard in QStory’s software provides planners with an overview of supply and demand levels for their business, in one, easy-to-view graph.
The graph is clearly shaded in red for staffing shortfalls and in blue where there are too many staff in – providing planners with a clearer, up-to-the-minute view of shift inflexibility.
Smart recommendations
In addition to supply and demand, QStory’s software also records agents’ skills and competencies, along with their specific training and development requirements.
Armed with this information, it makes smart recommendations to planners on how they can amend schedules in order to make the best use of agents’ idle time, without posing a risk to service levels.
Unlocking opportunities
With QStory, pockets of idle time become prime opportunities to schedule important offline activities, such as training and 121’s.
Our software even provides planners with individual agents’ names and the suggested times that these activities would be best carried out – meaning idle time never goes to waste.
Zero effort
What’s more, when call centre planners easily select and implement these suggestions using QStory, agents are automatically notified about the changes to their schedule.
Team leaders are also notified – keeping them in the loop – and the change to the agent’s schedule is automatically reflected in the WFM system – eliminating the excess manual work traditionally associated with these alterations.
Learn more
To find out more about how you can better utilise agent idle time within your contact centre, tune into the latest instalment of Dear Dave, or get in touch on DearDave@qstory.ai.