There are seasonality swings in just about every industry. Retailers gear up for the holiday blitz, florists become barraged with business for Valentine’s Day, and accountants get slammed during tax season, just to name a few examples. And while a lot of businesses recognize the need to ramp up staffing to handle these seasonal surges, customer service is one area that is often overlooked.

A GigCX contact center model like ShyftOff can enable a business to accommodate any demand curve, be it seasonal, weekly, daily or even hourly. We've written at length about GigCX and the benefits it offers businesses, but today we wanted to focus specifically on customer service productivity and cost. Using a real-life case study to support our claim, here’s how ShyftOff can increase customer service productivity and reduce costs significantly.

Setting the stage

In our case study, we produced an offered call volume forecast for each 30-minute interval over a four-week period. Additionally, we modeled caller demand for a subscription-based business model, which meant that we needed to review historical data and project future sales, subscriber churn, call volume and seasonality.

ShyftOff eliminates dissatisfaction and burnout

One thing we quickly noticed when reviewing the data was that there were significant fluctuations in call volume. For example, weeks one and four had less contact demand than weeks two and three. Additionally, peak calls on Mondays were nearly twice those of other days. We also recognized that customer service call patterns didn’t necessarily mimic a standard 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, schedule.

In order to accommodate weekend and evening call volume, traditional contact centers like the one we studied require employees to work what some consider to be undesirable shifts, leading to employee dissatisfaction. Those same employees may also be subject to working shifts that encompass peak call activity periods, with some employees feeling stressed or burned out from the added activity.

On the contrary, ShyftOff’s flexible 30-minute micro-shift scheduling empowers customer service agents to self-select when they want work and when they feel most engaged. In turn, businesses can realize a significant increase in customer service productivity from employees who are more satisfied and fulfilled.

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ShyftOff reduces overstaffing to save money

Another rippling effect of unique call volume patterns—like those we wrote about in our case study—is the overstaffing it can cause in a traditional contact center model. In most cases, contact center employees in this model work eight hours per day for a total of 40 hours per week, with schedules split between Monday through Friday and Saturday through Wednesday segments. Each day, staggered shifts beginning every 30 minutes determine the specific hours the employee works.

Call volume volatility can significantly impact a business’s bottom line. We’ve already mentioned those peak days and times when customer service call volume is high, but there must be a valley for every peak. In a model where every agent works 40 hours per week, the number of agents on the floor for the peaks will be the same number of agents on the floor for the valleys. Evaluating the ramifications of overstaffing for our case study, we found this resulted in 31% unproductive time and cost.

ShyftOff can work with businesses to predict when spikes and lulls might occur through modeling and forecasting. Armed with that information, we ensure that your business’s contact center has an appropriate number of certified agents working at all times. That means minimal shrinkage or overstaffing, which resulted in significant savings in total cost in our case study when compared to the traditional full-time model.

Would you like to hear more about how ShyftOff can improve your customer service productivity while simultaneously reducing total costs? Let’s talk.

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