Outbound Capacity Planning…

Outbound Capacity Planning…

Would love to hear some input as I am about to take on more of a client services role (versus operations) and not too sure how to go about this.

From my own experience with outbound campaigns, I have ideas as to how I could go about getting some answers – but these would be just from my own experiences and many assumptions. Wondering if there is a more precise way of getting some answers.

We are being given 120,000 leads to ‘work’ over a period of 12 weeks. It is an outbound campaign calling back consumers who were interested in a service (made an online inquiry).

We are allowed to contact these consumers up to 8 times and twice per day. The average call length will probably not be more than 2 minutes.

I’m trying to figure out the hours it would take to call through those 120K leads and then from there determine what my headcount will be (then translate to an FTE) – quoting over a period of 8 weeks and then 12 weeks.

I don’t have a lead usage per hour – is there an industry standard for this type of scenario?

Question asked by Jaimie

A Couple of Things for You to Consider

A couple of things for you to consider are what do you anticipate to be the right party contact rate. By this I mean when you call you actually get to speak to person you need as I would assume it wouldn’t be 100%.

From here look at the AHT for right and wrong party contacts, the wrong party contacts will be considerably lower than that of the right party contacts. Then weight your AHT to find the overall AHT.

You will need to see how many dials you are going to require as you will not get through first time and understand that you may not get to speak to everyone on your list.

You will also need to build in your shrinkage (how much off phone work will be happening, holidays sickness etc).

Once you have calculated your AHT, dials and shrinkage this should allow you to work out what FTE you will require to complete the work.

With thanks to Lee

What Kind of Dialer Are You Using to Make Your Calls

Would you be able to tell me what kind of dialer you are using? Normally, the thing that makes the most difference in getting calls dialed out is your agents habits with the customer. How long they are in a call, average wrap up time, talk time etc.

Then you are also relying on the algorithm as well. There are a lot of dialers on the market today that gives you a long wait time between calls.

With thanks to Robert

Outbound Capacity

Thanks all for responding, it is much appreciated. I was able to plug in some industry standard metrics in terms of lead usage and came up with an estimate of hours.

With thanks to Jaimie

Author: Jonty Pearce