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Now that's a good question. hehe.... I hate those no it all call center's. They don't know jack. =)

by me!

5 months ago

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statistical analysis

by brother_lu- 5 months ago

by taking an average for that time of day for the past week/month, whatever. calls are usually higher within an hour they first open and during lunch... right before and after holidays, right before and after the weekend.

by Kismet123- 5 months ago

Because they track the number of calls that come in each day, what time the call came in, how long the caller was on hold, how long the caller was on the phone with customer service, etc. Then they look at the stats to see which days and times are their busiest. After that, they make sure to place as few staff members as possible on those busy shifts and then change the call prompts to trick you into thinking you just chose an option that would get you a live person.

by 'tisJustMe- 5 months ago

it's called strategic management. they go off of last year and how many calls they recieced on certains days and certain times. so it's more like a guess than a prediction. it's taught in management to be able to have enough staffing for the higher call volume times and lower staffing for the lower call volumes so they save $$

by lynne- 5 months ago

Good call centers and businesses that actually care about customers track all the calls in the previous weeks, and what day and time the call was made. Automated software exists for this. Then they start building trends out of the data. Quite easy actually. Some low-quality call centers abuse this tool by playing messages like /we are experiencing unanticipated call volume/ but in reality they cut back on staffing to increase corporate profits. We have all, unfortunately, dealt with one of these places before.

by Marsha- 5 months ago

Think about it. Less people are going to call when they're working, so calling before / after work or on a break would be a good idea, right? Hence, call volume is raised around lunchtime and early morning and towards the day's end. Depending on what the call centre does, new services or faults with the services can cause irregular call volumes... advertising, etc. Just predicting given various factors... it's easy to do.

by Kirol- 5 months ago

It's an extremely complicated statistical analysis. They take into account how many people might call (for example, if it's customer service for a credit card company, the amount of people who MIGHT call would equal the amount of credit card holders.... so if there are 1 million accounts, then 1 million people might call... not likely, but possible). Then they reduce it by figuring out the likelihood of those customers needing to call. They consider if there have been any recent policy changes that the customers might want to ask about, also any issues with the online service (people would call for help), any recent mailings that might be confusing, etc. They also know that people call more during certain times of the day, as well as other factors, such as days of the week and holidays. Luckily, it isn't just one person calculating all of this volume. There are departments that figure out portions of the volume, for example if the website is having issues, the web department would be able to tell the analyst that it would affect approxamately 2.5% of the customer base. They'd figure this out based on the issue - if the site is totally down, they'd give the % of normal volume on the website during the projected time it would take them to fix the site.

by Carlii- 5 months ago