Video: Creating Flexible Schedules

In this video Vosy Gordon, ModusRP, explains flexibility in schedules and how to avoid the flexibility trap.

If you want to find out what else was discussed in this webinar, you can watch the replay ‘How to Build Flexibility into Call Centre Schedules‘.

Video Transcript

What Do We Mean by Flexibility?

Flexibility has two elements. From a planning perspective we are focused on supply and demand to get it absolutely spot on. But there are people involved. It’s not just numbers.

You need to get that balance that gives you the flexibility you need as a business and flexibility for your advisors. That is the holy grail of the flexibility that we’re talking about.

How to Avoid the Flexibility Trap

There’s also something called a flexibility trap, and that refers to putting too much flexibility into your schedules.

• How much flexibility do you actually need?
• How volatile is your business that you need a huge amount of flexibility?

In most businesses, including the majority of businesses that I’ve worked in and supported, you’ll have quite static profiles.

So what is it that you’re trying to achieve with the flexibility?

The likelihood is it’s those unpopular hours – the evenings and weekends that everybody hates working.

So that’s what you’re trying to achieve, but some people might want to do those. And when you’re building your schedules, we need to respect that some people don’t want to be flexible. So maybe you want to build your schedules with those people in mind.

Your really good advisors, who do a great job, but they want to work Monday to Friday, or they want to work in the day. How do we build those schedules in as our building blocks?

We can then work on how much flexibility we need, and start to put the rest of the the schedules in, and understand what kind of flexibility that we need.

This video was recorded when Vosy Gordon was a panellist on our 2022 webinar ‘How to Build Flexibility into Call Centre Schedules‘

If you are looking for more great video insights from the experts, check these out these videos next:

• What Is a Customer Experience Chain?
• Avoiding the Fairness Trap When Creating Schedules
• How to Design for Sentiment

Author: Vatsana Gordon
Reviewed by: Robyn Coppell