Tips to Control Shrinkage in Call Center

Tips to Control Shrinkage in Call Center

 

In the Call Center industry controlling shrinkage is one of the biggest challenges. It mostly happens with the domestic Call center. Since most people do take this job as a part-time and temporary resource, hence they keep this job’s priority at the secondary level which leads to the absenteeism in Call center. Also, a lower salary package in these call centers is one of the reasons for increasing the shrinkage pattern. In this article, I will share some prone “Tips to control shrinkage in Call Center”.

Shrinkage in Call Center

Tips to Control Shrinkage in Call Center

Agents are pillars and most reliable sources of any call center. Keeping your agents happy and getting them present in the office every day with increasing productivity is a hard nut to crack.

Controlling Shrinkage is not only required to meet the client's expectation but also to avoid the billing or financial loss to the call center. One agent's unplanned absenteeism means loss of one FTE( Full Time Employee) to the call center which means you will have to stretch your 8 agents for 1 hour in a day.So to avoid any unnecessary burden on other agents you ought to control your shrinkage.

Must Read: Salary in Call center 

Without further delay let's read this topic "Tips to Control Shrinkage in Call Center" in detail

Plan 10% buffer always: A Smart team leader should always plan 10%-15% additional associates as per the manpower demanded by the client. Having a 10% extra buffer will keep your shrinkage in negative, also if in case some medical or other emergency arises during the shift it will neutralize the shrinkage percentage to 0. This way you can control your shrinkage as well as blunt its negative impact.

Also planning extra manpower can boost your productivity and occupancy. It can also be a stress buster for available agents in case some sudden call flow arises.

The week off Preference: “Prevention is better than cure” this proverb says it all. Proactively you should ask your team to give request for the week off preference in advance to avoid real-time shrinkage. Smart team leaders should always keep a proactive approach instead of reactive.

 

 By sharing week off preference agents can inform the team leader about their plans in advance and team leaders can cater their preference accordingly. The week off swapping is also a solution to adjust real-time shrinkage by calling another agent to work as a replacement.

Tracking and Monitoring: Tracking and monitoring your employee is a good exercise to keep yourself up to date about the shift adherence and break adherence of employees. To track employees’ activity few call centers use the biometric application. A team leader should always look after these time logs to calculate shrinkage and plan of action to curb the shrinkage.

Speak to outliers: This often happens that while you plan the roster already with precise planning but nevertheless there are some outliers who all of a sudden take unplanned leaves and give a dent to the process. A team leader should speak to these outliers frequently and set the expectation to avoid absenteeism.

If these outliers are not nailed at the right time, it can provoke other associates to do the same which will adversely affect the process and the call center 

Read: What is the VERSANT test in a call center 

Reward the productive agent: To motivate employees you should always reward the agents who are productive and give cent percent shift adherence. Rewarding not only inspire other employees but also gives recognition to productive employees among the crowd.

Some of the ideas to provide rewards to these employees is to give movie tickets, food coupon, shopping coupon, or monetary incentives.

If the Call center shrinkage is not controlled at the right time can be a catastrophe to the process. uncontrolled shrinkage can lead to the stress level to other agents which can result in an increase in attrition of employees. So to retain your employees' Shrinkage is also a measure performance indicator to be controlled 

So, friend, these are some proven "Tips to Control Shrinkage in Call Center".

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