Call center employees - input needed

[Reyneth]

They've recently imposed an "unavailable" time % on us that is massively strict compared to the previous guidelines which weren't even something that we were evaluated on. I think the whole thing is redundant, as we're already evaluated on the department's dropped call % (single digits) and we have $$$ per month we need to collect - if you're goofing off off the phones for a non-legit reason, you're going to miss calls that could bring you that $$.

Apparently, our % is "very lenient" compared to other call centers, so I'd like to know more about other call center stats if possible, please.

Do you have inbound and outbound/autodialer calls or just one or the other?

Do you have additional documentation (hardcopy paperwork) that is ever needed after a phone call? By the customer's request or as a log of the results of a specific call. Do you have time that is alloted for doing these in your day, or do you end up doing it during your breaks?

Inbound -
What is a typical dropped-call %? What's a typical "on hold" # in relation to how many people work there, and how many calls do you typically get per day?

Outbound -
How many calls do you make per day? Do you have the party's information before the phone connects or how long does it take you to get in the program you need once you get the information? Do the calls ever come back-to-back with little or no time between the hangup and the next one connected?


Thanks to anyone/everyone who can give me even a few stats about how their center works. You can probably guess a little about mine based on the questions!

[bean]

The stats I have are pretty distant in my memory - it's been a couple of years since I was a supervisor in a call center. Also, we only did inbound.

However, we got bitchy if our dropped call % even broke 3% in a shift. Unavailable time was measured by month, not day - if you were unavailable more than 5% per month (including your breaks and lunch) then you'd be on the short list. The majority of calls were immediately connected to a CSR - "aftercall work" was supposed to be 1% or less of your shift, though it was just inbound sales, so very little ACW had to be done as long as you were a halfway decent typist (by that, I mean at least 30 wpm - I scored 95 on their test and that was on a shitty keyboard).

The highest number of calls on hold I ever saw was about 100 - generally they averaged 20 or less during peak times with an average hold time of under 2 minutes during peak times.

I honestly have no idea how many we got per day - I left that hellhole 2 years ago, and the company is now defunct.

This was actually a pretty poorly run call center in every way, but at least they had staffing down to a science (thanks to Blue Pumpkin, which tied into the PBX to do call volume forecasts).

[myswtghst]

Without the stat sheet in front of me, I'm not positive, but I'll guesstimate as best I can. I'm in a pretty specific circumstance as well - I work in an inbound call center, we provide technical support and dispatch services for contract customers with radio/phone equipment my company manufactures/supports, and I work second shift, so my numbers are more lenient and different than some other people's. Plus, we're a relatively small call center - 30 or so agents at peak hours, agents average 50-150 calls per day, depending on hours and call volumes.

I know our dropped call % can be relatively high, as we do get a number of autodial calls, as well as a relatively high number of wrong # calls and answering service type calls on the weekends/after hours. Calls are rarely dropped for reasons other than that, however.

For us, on a super-busy day with low staff, we occasionally get 5+ calls on hold, the most I've ever seen is maybe 10, and I've never seen more than a 15 minute hold time. This tends to happen later in the day/evening, when there are only 2-6 agents on the phones, and usually the long hold time is only for 1 call. On busy days with full staff, we'll get queue calls, but hold time is generally 2-5 minutes.

We are held responsible for our call times (most calls should average around 3-5min), our "after call work," which is time between the orignal inbound call hanging up and our "wrapping" our call (this gives us time to finish up any case notes/logging/outbound calls before becoming available to take the next call) and our availability, which factors in break times and any other times the agent is, for whatever reason, unable to take inbound calls.

Average after call work is about 2 minutes in my call center, because we often have to make outbound calls to finish the work on a particular case. Even working after hours, with plenty of extenuating circumstances, I still average 30s-1m after call work, most months. All the numbers mentioned above are measured as averages for the month, by the by.

That's all I can think of, based on your questions. Hope it helps.

[Stockholm Syndrome]

Been awhile since I've been on the floor but I still remember most of the metrics etc. Lucky me.

Do you have inbound and outbound/autodialer calls or just one or the other?

Inbound only.

Do you have additional documentation (hardcopy paperwork) that is ever needed after a phone call? By the customer's request or as a log of the results of a specific call. Do you have time that is alloted for doing these in your day, or do you end up doing it during your breaks?

The results of the call are supposed to be logged into the system during the call. Wrap-up time is supposed to average out to no more than 10 seconds per call. An additional 10 minutes per day of unavailable time is allowed. Everyone has to leave their workstation during breaks so there would no be way to do it then.

Inbound -
What is a typical dropped-call %? What's a typical "on hold" # in relation to how many people work there, and how many calls do you typically get per day?

Dropped and abandoned call stats are actually not given so not sure about that one. I have seen as few as 10 calls on hold and as many as 1000, average calls per day is 80-100, depending on how quick/efficient one is. Highest hold time I've ever seen is 15 minutes.

[freeatlast]

In the Call Center I worked in, all account adjustments were supposed to be completed during the call. There was no allowance for "not ready" time after the completion of the call. If the call required extensive adjustments, we were supposed to make a note of what needed to be done and take care of it later (if we experienced a slowdown in calls.) All calls were to be completed in 2 minutes or less. This meant that most agents would escalate the calls if they could not get the customer to hang up pretty quickly. We were also expected not to put our phones on "not ready" in order to go to the restroom or get a drink. It was sometimes pretty difficult to wait for a scheduled break or lunch to run to the restroom. Fortunately, my workstation was just outside the door to the ladies room and I soon found that I could take care of business in less than 2 minutes if I got desperate.

[Reyneth]

Thanks everyone so far.

I'm seeing that we have more "unavailable time" but one possible difference and one major difference - there are multiple screens you need to access to get all of the information - why we are talking to that person, how much $$ we need from them, why, if we have a police report, setting diaries, etc etc etc ad naseum - so sometimes I haven't actually been able to start my notes (except for who I talked to and that I verified info) until the call is nearly done. I *love* interpreter calls for that reason.

And we do inbound AND outbound. So as soon as that inbound call is done, if there aren't any on hold (having 5+ on hold is rare, and we max out at 14 agents in the whole department - for the entire country) you better be ready to react immediately for an autodialer outbound.

That's what messes me up the most. In trying to keep my time down the other day instead of using 1- 2 minutes ACW to type up/fill in a formated letter that was needed for the payment arrangement I just set up, it took me 6 minutes or more total between calls because I had to keep stopping for an outbound, going back to that original file and the info I had up that was no longer up because I had been in the claim for the outbound call. So I was taking a step or two backwards for every OBC and couldn't get anywhere with what I needed to do. And then I forgot the letter in the printer that night (no biggie, mail doesn't pick up Saturday anyway).

It's so flipping inefficient.
It is interesting to see what everyone else's experiences are like.

I have problems with my ear on the side of my headpiece, but I just can NOT switch sides. I've tried. Can't do it. So now it feels plugged up nearly all the time. Anyone else have this problem?

[CancelMyService]

At my call center, we have usually 60-110 people on the phones (less during overnight hours) and depending on if there's an outage or not we usually go from having 20-30 agents available during the day to having as many as 80-100 calls in queue during our rush time from 5-7 PM. Once when a major suburb had an outage, their was 230+ people waiting. Luckily I was already signed off for the night when it happened.

Our stats are usually pretty easy to reach. Our hold time is only 4% but you usually only have people on hold when transferring calls. What can trip you up is your wrap up time. It's 11% for the two week pay period average, but those times where it's busy nonstop all day you end up using it after every call just to finish entering the notes on the computer.

Since I do customer service, we get people who call in so there's no autodialer either in or out that I need to worry about. We don't have to worry about dropped calls either, since the nature of the calls mean sometimes people just hang up on you out of frustration/realizing they aren't getting their way. We're supposed to try to call people back who get dropped due to error, but if we're in queue the next call automatically comes in. Also when we transfer someone to another department we get the next call too, which sucks when it's break/lunch/quitting time and you get 6 calls in a row that need to go to other departments (and the last one who doesn't need transferred is the guy who wants to argue for an hour about some minute detail of his bill from 6 months ago).

This may just be me, but interpreter/relay calls just weird me out. Like, I get that it's the only way some folks can use the phone but the operators always want me to talk as if I'm speaking directly to the person. You really can't do that since you need to speak slowly to allow the person to translate, then there's a delay while the person responds back.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

I take inbound only, and I work the graveyard shift, so our stats are a little different than day stats. We have to write extensive notes on each call, and we have to use multiple programs in each call, so our stats are pretty lenient. Availability is 80% for day shift and 85% for gy. This does not include our breaks, which we have separate aux codes for.

Our ACT is 200 seconds, or 3:20. This is how long it's supposed to take us to complete a call.

We're supposed to work at least 4 tickets per hour and take at least 4 calls per hour (7 for day shift).

We're also given 10 extra minutes a day for emergency bathroom breaks or what have you.

[gunsage]

When I worked as a tier 2, our general flow was like this...

- AHT had to be between 8 and 15 minutes. Why the minimum? They earnestly believed that you were goofing off or dropping customers if it was below 8. Yeah, BS, I know, but still.
- QA monitorings were supposed to be random, but often slowed down your machine so much it was obvious. I won't even bother getting into the amount of ridiculousness they wanted you to achieve there, but yes, you were given a "rating" after they tallied up what you did/didn't do. Fortunately, mine was consistently above 95%.
- Our average wrap time was NOT TO EXCEED 1 minute. By the way, your AHT was talk time + wrap time, usually.

Now here, they don't really care so much. Resolution is what really matters here working as a tier 3. However, I just got my weekly stats...let's see how I compared to my last month as a tier 2...

Tier 2 Last Month

AHT - 8:00 flat.
Wrap - 10 seconds.
QA % - 98%

Tier 3 Last Week

AHT - 6:13
Wrap - 1:00
QA % - N/A

[smileyeagle1021]

Our center is inbound only (i've worked outbound before won't do that again) but I like how our system works, we must have 94% schedule compliance and can have as much aftercall as needed as long as we keep track of it and send our call logs in at the end of every day. As far as our stats, even on our busiest day I've never seen more than 3 calls in que at any given moment with a 1 minute hold time (though I've heard that over in branded res they've had ques with a hold time of up to 10 minutes and guest relations isn't abnormal to have 10 to 15 minute hold times... i've had to hold to do a warm transfer before, that screwed my stats). As it is I keep my average handle time less than 5 minutes and keep a 95% schedule compliance (the team average is 92% )