Like many companies, Business Technical Support is downsizing to meet the demands of Wall Street. We live in a time where we do more with less, while still striving to be more efficient, increase quality, and provide excellent customer service. In an attempt to downsize, Business Technical Support has offered a voluntary separation package. The package is offered to all management employees regardless of their time with the company. This creates a problem for my business unit within Business Technical Support, because we have been struggling over the last year, attempting to hire qualified technicians to fill our vacant job assignments. Our primary job is one of a call center, and in a call center environment the customer hold time prior to talking to the customer is one of the most significant statistics. Currently our goal is a 90 second hold time for the customer. I can appreciate this as a consumer, because I hate waiting a lengthily amount of time to get through to technical support when I have a problem with a product. .
Maintaining a hold time of less than 90 seconds is one of the key factors that lead to a service level calculation reported to the executives. To maintain this you must have enough agents standing by to pick up incoming calls, yet balance it with a minimum crew to keep the overall budget down. The impending voluntary reduction is not aimed at reducing the number in our center, but since all of our agents are management level employees, they are all eligible to leave. Therefore, we are attempting to come up with a game plan to address our future customer service levels due to an employee shortage. Our call center currently runs with over 400 agents, and we have been struggling to raise the number of agents to 450. Some of the managers are burying their heads in the sand and feel no one would leave a job that pays over 20 dollars an hour. In contrast, other managers are bracing for the possibility that our workforce could decrease by up to 15%.
