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From Resource,
March 2007
Copyright by LOMA
Business Continuity:
Are You Ready for the Full Spectrum of Events?
Do you have a plan to
insulate your call center capacity across a spectrum of potential events? Find
out what you need to know to keep your business running.
By Richard Spearrin
Business Continuity is the hot
topic in most call centers today. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina served as a long
overdue wake-up call to many business operations. As a result, more up-to-date
and realistic plans were developed. The litmus test question is: “Does your
plan address the full spectrum of potential events?” While major storms are
serious, they are infrequent. Utility outages, technology failures, and local
emergencies cause more frequent loss of call center capacity.
Some
examples of outages that have closed call centers are:
A
power cut to a call center in
Virginia
in July. The backup generator could not handle the air conditioning demand in
addition to lighting, phone system, elevators, and PC’s. The building
temperature quickly exceeded 85 degrees with no air circulation, and the
customer service representatives (CSRs) were sent home.
A
water main broke outside a call center in
New England
. The local health inspector walked in and announced that the water to the
building was being shut off to facilitate repairs, and without running water to
the building, everyone must leave, and leave now.
The main processor board on a core
data switch in the call center failed. This is a component that only fails
every 100 years. But it did, and there was no system access for call
fulfillment. With the cost of a standby unit being $60,000, the call center
decided to take its chances. The 125 CSRs at the site had team meetings and
spot training for the remainder of their eight hour shift.
When a major storm occurs, it usually
becomes a rallying point for corporate support. Staff, technology and overtime
funding are usually readily available. For events of a lesser scale, especially
ones which occur with no warning, you are usually considered to be on your own
in developing a response plan. So when developing a new plan or updating your
existing plan, make sure you account for a full spectrum of possible events.
A
good starting point is to inventory the spectrum of event types that you have
faced or may face. Events should include the customary outages and also
situations such as a product recall or a major corporate announcement. Then
create a plan which will address both events which occur without warning and
weather related events as well. Such a plan would identify call volume increases
with a color coded escalation plus a preplan of available resources. . While
your plan may differ to meet organizational specific situations, the important
first step is to document the sequential steps and the players involved in
situations when call volumes are greater than expected or can be managed.
As you develop your plan, make sure that the
senior managers who are responsible for the daily results agree with your use
and timing of the response workforce. If your plan includes a degraded service
level or omitting certain call processes, you will want their input before the
event occurs. The best defense is a good offense.
Once
you inventory the types of events, next evaluate the workload impact of each.
For example, the impact of any one site being out for various durations such as
two and four hours or a more prolonged delay of eight hours or a full three
shift day. Finally include a multi-day event lasting up to a week. Also include
a contingency for the event to occur on a Monday.
If
your sites are not equally staffed, make sure your plan accounts for the impact
of each size site being unavailable. Also, if you have site specific skills or
functions, make sure your workload numbers reflect difference in handle times
for the staff that will handle these contacts. This handle time impact likewise
applies to any contingency workers you may need for extended events.
When
you identify your event workload requirements, you can use a process called
Event Based forecasting to project the staff requirements. Event Based
forecasting is a process that uses several input elements to project the
potential impact and staff requirements of an event. Essential elements are:
Customer base in the impact
region/ affected by the event
Severity
of the event
Anticipated
duration of the event
Historical
experience with the same or similar event
Now that you know your staff requirements,
let’s look at potential sources of staff that can be used on your escalation
plan. The most common sources of short term found time are:
Postponed
meetings
Postponed
quality feedback sessions
Deferred,
delayed or interrupted training. At a major insurer, trainees who were more than
half way through their training were put on the phones during a major weather
event. Although considered an experiment, the results were better than expected
and call surges were handled within Service Level.
Quality
staff assigned to take calls
Floor
management and administrative staff assigned to take calls
Overtime
requested/expected for frontline staff
Off
phone process people trained in call handling and system entry
If the situation continues past one day and
possibly for an entire week you will need to use contingency workers, or people
from other departments or business units. Sources of a contingent workforce can
be:
Other
departments who can loan staff for short durations.
An
outsourcing partner who currently takes a percentage of your calls. This
agreement should be negotiated in advance of any request.
Headquarters
/Home Office staff who provide administrative support the call centers.
Workers
from temporary employment agencies
Additional staff time can be found in
alternate handling of deferrable work. Many multimedia contacts, such as e-mail
response or fax data entry can be delayed until the event has passed or until
off-shifts when call volumes are significantly lower. These non-phone contacts
can also be performed by people who know the function, but are not phone
centric. This is also true for Web text chat. Many home office/headquarters
process people know the answers but are not comfortable with direct customer
contact. These alternatives provide you more call handling capacity, and should
be included on your escalation plan.
If your contingency is a short notice product
harm related call surge, you will need to plan for more then just call handling.
Situation specific training needs to be developed and deployed quickly. You may
also need to develop abbreviated training for contingency workers. Identify the
calls that can be best handled by these workers and then determine the essential
elements for the call. Just-in-time training can deliver the required skills to
these people and ensure the best call handling results.
A key success factor in securing contingency
workers from other departments is the demonstration that you have identified the
expected call volumes, staff shortages and the expected duration for using these
workers. The Event Based Forecasting process conveys a greater sense of validity
of your plan by demonstrating the due diligence you have applied to your event
planning. By providing the sending managers with these specifics, you better
enable them to develop their plan for supporting your needs.
Technology can play an enabling role in your
plan. IP telephony can connect remote or Home Office employees to your call
center to take calls as if they were actually there. Technology can also enable
you to communicate with your callers by using prerecorded and on-demand messages
in the network or the automatic call distributor (ACD) to set the callers
expectations about answer time.
Make sure you partner with IT to determine if
technologies such as the voice response unit (VRU) has sufficient ports and
trunks for a call surge. Likewise, the call centers need sufficient trunks to
handle some percentage increase of call handling over normal daily loads.
Including IT will enable you to identify any links in your call completion chain
that may have limitations during a call surge.
Communications is also important with
internal partners. The escalation plan discussed earlier is an excellent way to
communicate expected actions and responses. For weather events, or those that
will last a longer duration, a more comprehensive plan will be required.
Communicating early and communicating often helps ensure a more successful
response.
If you have only one site that provides 24
hour coverage, you need to include a contingency for that call coverage as well.
If the site must be evacuated at 1:00 AM, you can’t go looking for additional
resources then. There are several options for providing caller announcements and
remote call coverage. But you have to identify your alternatives in advance and
provide the process and technology required for it to work successfully.
When the outage is expected to last longer
than a week, such as physical damage to a call center, the contingency plan
requires much more detailed planning and agreements then the shorter type
events. Workflows may have to be changed, more extensive training will be
required, and the technology infrastructure may also require modifications. As
importantly, people may have to travel to support the workload requiring travel
and access to funds planning. This is another level in contingency plan
development.
Another type of event that requires more
detailed consideration and planning is the potential for a regional or national
pandemic. Whether the threat is perceived or real, you may have a very real
reduction in your call handling capacity if your staff is unable or unwilling to
report to work. Depending on the extent of the pandemic, this workforce
reduction could last several weeks.
So start with the most common events you
expect to experience and then graduate to the next levels of complexity. You
will improve your own planning skills and through experience, prepare your
senior managers to plan for more complex events.
If you have already developed your plans,
make sure you conduct “Fire Drills” to ensure they are realistic. Review and
update your plans annually to account for changes in call types, call volumes,
or other business changes that would require updates. Also make sure new
managers are aware of their role in your plan, and new senior managers are aware
of the commitments that their predecessors have made. You want to eliminate or
at least minimize internal surprises as well as external events.
About
the Author:
Richard
Spearrin is the President of The Call Center Consulting Group, LLC, in Essex,
CT. He has 38 years experience with call center operations and
telecommunications design. He has been a chairman and speaker at eight call
center industry conferences, and is a member of the Board of Advisors for two
industry professional groups—The Society for Workforce Planning Professionals,
and the NorthEast Contact Center Forum. Mr. Spearrin can be reached at:
wrspearrin@thecccg.com.
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