contact centre services modelling
Whether you are running your own operations or are a supplier of outsourced services, running a contact centre is a complicated - and cost competitive - business, especially where there are associated back office processing and service functions requiring varying levels of staffing and staff skills.
Contact centres frequently have sophisticated software for running their systems but this sophistication does not extend to planning all aspects of operations as efficiently.
Here are just some of the factors that must be considered:
- Especially where inbound calls dominate, demand can fluctuate hugely. How can you plan for expected variations and design for variations outside the norm?
- How can the cost of maintaining service levels best be balanced against loss of business and customer dissatisfaction if they aren't?
- Some processes are sequential and some are interdependent. How can bottlenecks be anticipated and minimised under different load conditions?
- Staff can be switched between tasks according to demand, but only if multi-skilled. How many need to be multi-skilled and how can temporary and part time staff best be used at minimum cost?
- How can investment in new technology improve efficiency compared to, or in conjunction with, changes in working practices?
With these and other factors to consider, the task of planning manually can only be carried out at a superficial level - you just have to settle for a crude compromise between cost and quality, based on your experience and 'ready reckoning' and accept that you won't really know what performance to expect before the service is required.
However, a dynamic model built to your requirements by Paragon can incorporate all these factors into a single model that will reveal complex interactions. The model will allow you to try various scenarios, compare them using Paragon’s unique ‘Information Manager’, show the bottlenecks, and even have the costs associated with each option automatically calculated. You can see the impact of optimising or prioritising one service on other services and can then test the robustness of you plans under extreme conditions.
In addition, as requirements change, you can use the model to re-plan, so it can be used over a period of years as your business evolves. The model can also be used to experiment with short term changes as new ideas can be tried in hours with immediate results.
To provide them with information for bidding against new tenders and for re-planning every year once it knows which tender/routes have been won
Open Paper (new window)
Understand and measure how changing the management of services reduced the frequency and impact of delayed hospital discharges for elderly and disabled people.
Open Case Study (new window)
A simulation model to help analyse and optimise the operation of the EFT process service centre.
Open Paper (new window)
"The model revealed…that a greater number of smaller rooms - 26 - would be required to meet performance objectives. It also revealed the best ways to organise staff rosters and workflows for maximum efficiency."
