Staffing Plan Fundamentals: Shrinkage and Utilization
Shrinkage and Utilization are essentially the inverse of each other. Utilization is the % of paid time that your staff is available to handle a call / transaction. Shrinkage is anything that takes them away from being available to handle a call / transaction.
In my opinion, this is one of the least understood aspects of staff planning in the contact center. (And why we drive ourselves crazy with real-time monitoring..)
If your Utilization is 75%, that means your team members are available for a call / transaction 75% of the time you are paying them.
Shrinkage is the 25% when they are not available for a call / transaction. This could be time away from work or time spent on "non-productive" work activities. "Productive" in this context means available for a customer call / transaction. Common shrinkage activities include things such as meetings, trainings, 1 on 1s, vacation time, system downtime, “special project” time, unscheduled bathroom breaks, etc.
Accounting for, tracking, and predicting shrinkage and utilization as part of your staff planning process isn't necessarily about whether shrinkage time is "good" or "bad". Some of the verbiage can unintentionally imply judgement. In reality, it’s simply important to understand and predict these rates with a reasonable level of accuracy.
So, what are "normal" utilization / shrinkage rates? First, don't set your target based on some guy's opinion on the internet. You need to assess your current state to understand your current reality. But...
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Many centers probably have a Utilization rate around 70%. Many centers also lack visibility to this and aren’t making conscious choices about where the 30% shrinkage time is spent. By forecasting it, and tracking the actuals, you can start to understand where time is going and start making decisions about where time would be most valuably spent.
This is another place where thoughtfulness is important. Think about the cadence of review and frequency of adjustments you make either to your forecast or to your schedules and policies. Just because a number seems big doesn't mean you should immediately and forcefully try to change it. Seek to understand. Validate. Consider the impact of change on both the employees and your customers.
You may be thinking "there is no way 25% - 30% of shrinkage is the norm!" Do some quick math and you'll realize it's not as crazy as it may seem. Let's say a full-time employee will work roughly 177 hours this month, or about 22 working days. If they are scheduled 2 paid breaks of 15 minutes each, that's 660 minutes or 11 hours across 22 working days. You're already over 6% shrinkage and all you've factored so far is breaks... How much time is spent for 1 on 1s, team meetings and QA time? What about sick / vacation time? Do they need non-phone time for customer research and follow-up?
If we pretend this stuff doesn't happen, or don't actually account for it, we don't realize the actual hours that need to be accounted for. It's easy to ignore the invisible work and pretend it doesn't exist, but ignorance in this case is not bliss.
The point is, you can’t expect 100% of employee time to be available to calls / transactions. If your plan assumes that, you are understaffing yourself by 20% - 30%.
You can find more content like this from me and other members of the Vistio Knowledge Collective here: Vistio.io/Knowledge
You rightly point out that the goal isn't to change AHT itself but to accurately predict it. This shift in perspective is crucial for realistic staffing plans. Great Analysis ??
Senior Director Of Customer Service at Sun Country Airlines
1 年The latest in the series focused on Occupancy is live! https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/hydej_cctr-wfm-staffing-activity-7171512429267333121-4Ktq?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Transforming Contact Centres | Building High-performing Teams | Driving Operational Excellence
1 年Jeremy Hyde great article emphasisng two really important metrics in contact centres. It’s one of the first things I look at in a contact centre operation and a thorough review should be held at the very least, every budget cycle and monitored regularly. Although there are plenty of valuable non-productive activities, I sometimes position shrinkage as a ‘cost’ as it can help bring into focus when things become bloated or absence not being managed, for example. If you’re prioritising plenty of coaching, training and engagement activities as long as the business accepts the ‘cost’ that is perfectly fine as well. One very small observation.. you define utilisation as ‘75% of the time you are paying them’. I tend to include unpaid events such as unpaid absence during a probationary period (UK based here!) because I’m using shrinkage to calculate the FTE needed to deliver the required productive time. I suspect you do this too, but would be interested if not, why not?
I beg to differ. What you refer to as Utilisation is in fact Occupancy. Namely the % of scheduled time that the seat is occupied by the agent ready to take a contact. Utilisation is the % of occupied time that they spend engaging with customers. You should be aiming for 75-80% utilisation of their occupied time which will generally average out at circa 50-60% of their staffed time. Anything above 85% utilisation and you’ll lose productive hours through absence and sickness leading to attrition
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1 年Clearly I’m late to this party!!! ????♀? All very good commentary! Great article Jeremy Hyde !!!