HiEveryone.

I did try a search on this one but couldnt find anything meaningful, we are looking at the possibility of having teams with the same RDO in our contact centre rather than just scattered around. The way we have a sales / support staffing split with a bias towards sales could present an issue but I have heard people say this could cause some inefficiencies, but no one can example them - has anyone got any feedback on implementing this in their contact centre that may be worth considering ?

many thanks in advance.
Craig.

Come on....

What's an RDO? [1]

Might give us an idea of the problem :-)

Regards

DaveA



[1] Rapid Deployment Otters?

Might be one of these:

http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/Resource+Definition+Online

I don't think it is Red Dawg Order so I am guessing at Regular/Rotating Day Off?

Rob

Rob,

I'm thinking something to do with ostriches maybe?

Although my initial thought, and it shows my bias,
were that the R would be reporting.

It's not in the Glossary anywhere (Although WILL BE!)

I wait in anticipation

Regards

DaveA

Sorry All - Rostered Day Off :-)

OK,

Well I think the Otters were a more interesting explanation!

Just one though sprimgs to mind immediatly, won't a same day
RDO actually take that team completely out of circulation?

It would help to know how the existing structure works / functions before
we try and suggest anything else.

Still not helping a lot I know!

Regards

DaveA

Hi Dave.

Thanks for the reply. Yep team RDO's will take a whole team out of circulation, but that's not my immediate concern. Current structure goes like this -

2 floors, 1 Sales, 1 Support. Sales has 7 teams totalling 141 FTE, Support has 3 teams totalling 50 FTE. I think there are plans to move some people over to support (about 11 FTE)soonish so work on a 60/130 split. I feel the inbalance of staff could be prohibitive but would rather be positive and look for a solution than bin the idea outright. As requested in my initial post I am interested to see how this has worked in other contact centres and any initial difficulties that may have been experienced.

Right

1st question, is the 3:1 (ok 2.82) ratio for sales:support
a fixed requiremnt or is that just where you've ended up?

It looks as if you're looking to aim for a higher support ratio (2.3:1)
so that said....

What has your demand analysis said up to this point?

What is the split of calls across the two demands, when allowing for actual
call workload is the ratio actualy working?

If that were the case, and, provided you can make the assumption that one sales
call generates 0.43 support calls you say that provided you staff the sales
line correctly to forecast you can let x Sales and x/2.3 support agents off
at the same time.

Now, radically, how about embedding the support functon within the teams on
the 2.3:1 ratio? That way you can then schedule team days off, training
sessions, meetings etc..

Just my 2p's worth (at the moment).

thoughts?

Regards

DaveA

Just on a gut feeling, having teams grouped by RDO seems a bit thin. I was just trying to think of the normal ways in which teams are grouped:

1) Function - support together, sales together
2) Product or service - put everyone that deals with service A together
3) Geography - everyone who serves the North West together
4) Customer segment - team deals with premium customers
5) Customer type - teams for retail or business
6) Process - all the people who deal with the end-to-end of a process together.

All plausible and I bet people can think of others. But notice they are all somehow to do with the type of call. I just think that grouping people by their regular day off is a bit of a flimsy reason to group a team together, especially when you have all the above reasons to do it. Dave asks about demand analysis, and he is right to ask that. I would start there and then group teams by whatever your investigations point to.

Best,

Rob

Thanks to those that have replied, some food for thought there. A bit busy right now but will examine further.