Controlling Answering Service Call Volume

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Answering Service Can Control Their Inbound Volume By Selecting Clients From Varied Time Zones

By Specialty Answering Service

One of the more difficult challenges that will face a manager at an answering service is scheduling. Staffing an answering service is no easy task. From the hiring procedures to the actual act of writing up a schedule, management must not only be extremely organized, but creative as well. In the entire call center industry, a balance of having enough qualified operators to get the job done must also factor in having too many to make the operation cost effective.

While it is not an easy task to properly staff any office, the factors which make answering service staffing extremely difficult make posting a schedule, a work of art. And even after the task is completed, absenteeism, illness and turnover can bring down the entire house of cards. Why this type of call center staffing is difficult can be attributed to many factors, but specifically four major problems that plaque the industry.

Twenty-Four Hour Staffing

Live operator answering service is an around the clock challenge. Having to draw from a pool of nine to five employees is difficult enough. When one must also count on employees to work evenings and overnight, the task becomes daunting. Factor in having to staff the weekends (around the clock) and scheduling becomes a rather difficult puzzle.

Time of Day Staffing

An answering service generally experiences time of day traffic spikes. Generally, the mornings around the start of day, and evenings around quitting time produce an extraordinary amount of calls. Outside those times, the answering service generally experiences "lulls". This phenomenon makes staffing very challenging. If you hire enough operators to handle the "rush" periods, extra operators are wasted during the periods of lower call volume. Most regional based answering services experience these spikes in volume based on a majority of the clientele located in the same time zone.

Weather Related Staffing

Many Answering Services operate and service a local area. Because of this fact, their clients tend to share the same weather conditions. Weather is a factor as to the amount of call volume that an answering service receives. It is extremely difficult to forecast weather conditions when posting a schedule in advance. The weather can be the difference of needing six operators, or needing twelve. It is virtually an impossible task to be properly prepared to deal with weather related call volume. Some services have "on call" strategies, but even when preparedness is optimized, call centers are at the mercy of Mother Nature.

Even in the most ideal situations scheduling an answering service is tough to do. An answering service sales team is a key component in making the task of staffing a little easier. If the sales team specifically targets businesses in various time zones, and targets in various climates. A call center that has customers evenly spread throughout the four time zones has a distinct advantage over the competition. By having customers in every time zone time of day traffic is often eliminated by staggering the traffic throughout the day. In addition with customers spread out throughout the United States, weather related traffic is diminished. This is the one factor that can be controlled by the sales and marketing staff. By concentrating on time zones that the answering service does not normally service, the sales team can make scheduling an easier task.

Problem Employees / High Turnover

As a rule the answering service employee tends to be transient. This factor throws a wrench into the already difficult labyrinth of scheduling. Having to factor in the unpredictable is something that the scheduler must take into consideration. Often times call centers are over scheduled to factor in the probability of an employee calling off.

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