Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

There are still a lot of centers that don’t plan how many people they expect to lose every month, believe it or not.  Most especially those that have in-house call centers.  Since attrition is something they don’t expect as much as outsourced sites, it isn’t on top of their list.

I’ve talked to some managers and always felt that they never had problems before so why should they even prioritize it.  Okay, let’s be realistic.  I only said plan for it NOT hope for it to happen.  What do we need to do?  A simple task really.  I hear some of you complaining that you’re not math majors.  I am not as well.

Here is a simple step by step process:

• Start a new spreadsheet.
• Begin with the current week and pencil in each week on a column.
• Place your current headcount.
• In one row, name that as your “attrition” numbers.  This will populate to actual numbers as you move along the timeline but should put in a forecasted number weekly as well.
• Remember to put the required number of heads you need to handle forecasted calls as well.
• Calculate every week based on the number of expected people you lose every week or even every month or quarter.  It is entirely up to you.  You know your historical numbers.

See, that was easy, wasn’t it?  It’s very simple.  Sure, there are other software programs out there that can do it automatically, but in case you don’t have one or just want to learn the basics, then you can start with this.