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Managing Your Call Centre

       The Call Centre Simulator is software that allows you to manage your Call Centre more effectively. It can simulate staffing problems and try out solutions. The four most difficult aspects of managing a Call Centre are:

  • The correct number of Staff.
  • The cost of the staff.
  • The Call Delay.
  • The number of Abandoned Calls

    • As a manager, you are continually balancing all 4 of these parameters, and now you can purchase the tool to help you get it right. You can continuously run your call rate data, number of staff, current call delays, the number of people in the queue and rate at which the calls will change, and see if you are going to have a problem over the next few minutes, hours or the shift. The software enables you to find out exactly when a problem is likely to occur, why it will occur and the best solution to use in the next few minutes, or hours or the next shift.

    You will be able to analyse the past to make you a better, more responsive, manager for the future. You will learn to analyse the problem, establish which is the cause and which is the effect, try out many solutions to find the best combinations, and apply them today.

            The Call Centre Simulator is a true call by call simulator. This allows you to see the call delay for each call as well as having an average call delay, which in practice allows a much better analysis of the situation.

            The Call Centre Simulator also allows you to simulate scenarios where the call rate is increasing or decreasing, which is a very common situation. No other simulator attempts to simulate this, as they use Erlang's formulas, which do not allow for inhomogeneous call rates. The Call Centre Simulator uses deterministic random Poisson models which are much more relevant to real life situations.

    Solving Problems as They Occur

           The program can generates it's own calls based on your data. All you have to do is input a few simple parameters, and the program produces a range of results in pictorial format (as can be seen below) as well as numerical summaries so you can easily see what is happening throughout the simulation.

           The graph below is an example of call delay experienced by each of the 200 calls simulated in this situation.

    The above picture shows how the average call delay differs from the individual call-to-call delay. The average call delay is 15 seconds whilst the call-to-call delay varies between zero and 60 seconds. Calls with 60 seconds delay are very unlikely to cause the call to be abandoned, thereby losing their business.

    There is a more detailed description of the software available. Simply click on the link labelled "Description of Program" for more information on its advantages and how it works. This site includes the user guide to demonstrate how easy our software is to use.

    If you would like information on how to acquire a copy of Call Centre Simulator, then please click on the link labelled "Purchase Details".

    For more information about the practical uses of our software and how this software could benefit your company, please click on the link labelled "Examples".

    If you have any questions or would like more information on our Call Centre Simulator then please contact us on our "Contact" link. Included on this page is a contact form to enable you to email questions to us directly.

    At Call Centre Solutions we are constantly trying to improve our software. At present we are in the process of creating a new version of our software to help other industries with their workload problems. This software will hopefully be on sale in the New Year. If you would like to know more please click on the "Upgrade" link.

    The Call Centre Simulator was originally created for a Mathematical Project at UMIST University. The entire project is available for you to read or download, simply click on the link marked "Project" to understand the maths behind the program.

    If you require consultancy help with your staff rostering or other areas, please consult our "Consultancy" link.

    Call Centre Solutions is working in collaboration with CDT to bring you the Call Centre Simulator. If you would like information on staff rosters or just require advice on Staffing in general, please visit their site by clicking on the "CDT" link.

     

     

    Thank you for visiting our Website

    Call Centre Simulator Created by Call Centre Solutions and CDT

     Tel: (+44) 01636 816466    Fax: (+44) 01636 816882
     Email: alec@visualrota.co.uk
                            

    The Old Vicarage, Station Road, Rolleston, Newark, Notts, UK, NG23 5SE

    © 2001 Call Centre solutions

    "Every Day is Different - Explain"

    Imagine you are asked to investigate why your call centre is experiencing problems in answering all calls within a few seconds, and why many callers are abandoning calls. Your company had used Erlang calculations to establish the number of operators for the usual volume of traffic. A typical day has a call rate of 25 calls/half hour and 6 operators appears to be correct according to Erlang calculators, except that every day seems to have problems. You have lots of call data, but none of it shows you the problem. You are asked to investigate and recommend a solution.

    You are able to look at the call data from last week and it is displayed below in the graphs. Each graph covers 4 hours(200 calls) for each morning during the week.
    monday calls

    tuesday calls

    wenesday calls

    thursday calls

    friday calls

    saturday calls

    sunday calls

    The graphs show that Monday did not have a problem that could be investigated.
    However on Tuesday, a definite problem occurred at mid morning and for some reason the call delay shot up from about zero to 120 seconds.
    Looking at the average call delay of 28 seconds, this is not indicative of the sudden change in delay from zero to 120 seconds. The long delay is for many of the calls, once it starts to appear, and would probably result in many calls being abandoned. It would obviously be useful to look at Tuesdays calls in more detail. The Call Delay graph shows the effect, now we have to look for the cause.
    Below are the Call Delay and the Call Rate graphs for Tuesday.

    tuesday calls

    call rates on Tuesday
    The graphs can be split into 7 sections:

  • 1. The first 70 calls are about an average of 25 calls/half hour or less, and hence this is no problem.
  • 2. Then, a group of about 10 calls come in at a slightly higher call rate, 27 calls.half hour.
  • 3. Then, the calls fall back to below average for about 6 calls.
  • 4. Then, the next 20 calls come in at a rate of 27-28 calls/half hour.
  • 5. Then, a long period of about, or below, average call rates for some 50 calls.
  • 6. Then a period of calls at a low call rate.
  • 7. The remaining calls are about at average call rates.
    By comparing the Call Rate and Call Delay graphs, we can see a definite correlation at about the 70th call. Just as the Call Rate moves from 25 to 27 calls/half hour, the Call Delay leaps up as well. Point 2 There is a slight reduction as the Call Rate reduces, point 3, and then a massive and swift increase as the Call Rate once again increases. Point 4. The Call Delay then takes a long time reducing at a slow rate, point 5 until the Call Rate drops below the average, point 6.
    The other days of the week when problems occurred show similar correlation between Call Delays and sudden changes in Call Rates, albeit apparently low in magnitude at an increase of 10% for very short periods.
    The conclusions that can be drawn from this analysis are:
  • Swings in Call Rates are a fact of life and an increase of 10% is small in practice and can be expected to happen frequently.
  • There are just enough operators for this level of call duration and call rate.
  • The operators are working at about 96% utilization irrespective of whether there is a problem or not.
  • The system is almost chaotic in practice, swinging from normal to overload in very short time periods due to small changes in Call Rates, but it takes a long time to return to 'normal' operating conditions.
  • The system can expect most days to be chaotic.
  • Callers can expect to be answered immediately or they can expect to wait over 60 seconds. Regular callers will adapt and abandon their calls when not answered immediately, usually calling back later and thus adding to the chaotic system. I call this the 'snowball effect'.
    Possible solutions to try out include:
  • Adding an extra operator at all times.
  • Adding an extra operator only when the Call Delay starts, usually by employing this person on another task and allowing them to switch jobs. (Multi-Tasking/break relief/even yourself!)
  • Shorten the Length of Call by analysis of the processing of the calls and applying electronic or mechanical shortcuts.
  • Alert the operators to speed up current calls.
  • Divert calls with long Call Delays to answering machines for ringback at a later, quiet, time.
  • Do some or all of the above depending on the circumstances. Use a flexible approach.
    All of these solutions can be tried out in advance on the Simulator in a few minutes. For instance, the cost of having another operator can be directly compared with the average income from each answered call. Obviously, this is a predicted result, but it can be tested in practice the very next day, and if it is found that the income is insufficient, then you will know two things that you didn't know before.
    1. The actual income each call generates.
    2. How much business is lost each day of chaotic operations.
    These are very valuable data parameters to the business achieved at very little cost to the business. Before using the Simulator, a business could only guess at the income it was losing through abandoned calls, now it has a tool to analyse the income being generated through the Call Centre.

    This is one example of how to use the Simulator, there are many other ways it can help your business.

    Once you have decided on the correct staffing levels, you will need to set up your Staffing Roster which is at
    Visual Rota

    Thank you for visiting our Website

    Call Centre Simulator Created by Call Centre Solutions and CDT

     Tel: (+44) 01636 816466    Fax: (+44) 01636 816882
     Email: alec@visualrota.co.uk
                            

    The Old Vicarage, Station Road, Rolleston, Newark, Nottinghamshire,

    Great Britain,  NG23 5SE

    © 2005 Call Centre solutions