4 Small Changes that Can Have A Huge Impact on Your Call Center Service Level

Service level is a metric that you can use to determine how accessible your company is to your customers.

The metric is defined as the percentage of calls that your team can answer within a predetermined time (or your target threshold).

Simply put, if your company has a poor service level, then that means your customers are waiting for a long time on the phone before your agents pick up — this could either be because there are far too many incoming calls, or there are too few agents available to answer the phone calls.

An excellent service level, on the other hand, means your customers can speak to an agent immediately.

In the call center industry, it is one of the most important indicators of productivity.

Because it can impact the overall experience of your customers with your company, failing to meet the desired service level target can cause all sorts of problem to a business.

If you’re struggling with meeting your service levels, then here are some tweaks that you can implement that can have a big impact for us in outsourcing support services in the Philippines.

Reward attendance

Because you will need your agents to report to work and have enough people to man the desk, it is not enough that you simply include the importance of employee attendance in your employee handbook or punish those who are unable to meet their attendance targets.

You can do more by providing various positive reinforcements for agents who come on time.

For instance, you can recognize employees with perfect attendance (and no tardiness) or give a small bonus.

Defined break schedule

The volume of calls that you receive will vary at different times of the day. You might receive fewer calls in the morning, for example, but will have volume build-up in the evening.

That is the reason why another small change that you can establish in your organization is to define different break schedules for all agents.

In this way, you can be sure that they will not go to lunch together at the expense of the service level.

Giving your agents different break schedule will also allow your business to have the manpower in dealing with incoming calls at different time intervals.

Schedule Adherence

Additionally, encourage your call center agents to follow their schedules. It’s no use providing a defined schedule for their breaks when they don’t follow it.

This can be done by putting up a timer once they log off for a break so they know how long they have left and can come back to their workstation on time.

Clear after-call work processes

Another quick tip that works is to establish a routine after-call work process.

An after-call work involves everything that an agent does upon each end of the call, such as writing down notes, updating an account, and getting ready for the next call.

Creating a clear routine of the processes when a call is ended will make your agents more efficient. They can quickly get back to the queue to receive their next caller, improving service level.

Your next step

The service level is going to be an important performance target that your business needs to achieve consistently.

Making the above small changes in the way that your call center organization works can greatly and positively impact your service level.

Call us today to find out how we can help you optimize productivity, deliver a better customer experience and provide outsourced customer service.