Management's obsession

Everything at the call center is ruled by one thing: Statistics. While I'll cover tech statistics in a later post, this one will describe a management statistic.

Management is ruled by one number over all - ASA, average speed of answer. That is the average amount of time all customers have had to wait before talking to a rep in a 24 hour period. Right now the goal is 60 seconds. When the queue goes up, the wait to speak with a rep gets longer and the ASA rises. And management starts running around like a chicken with his head chopped off trying to figure out why the queue is so high.

Management's slavish obsession with the ASA comes at a price. Let me give you some background. In order to allow the techs to work more efficiently, you should have a few experienced techs or even lead technicians walking the floor to help out with questions. This is why techs will put you on hold, to confer with a floor walker. But management frequently short staffs that position and it causes lines of techs standing next to the one or two available floor walkers. Also when the queue goes up, floor walkers will get ordered to take calls. This is, of course, short sighted.

Here's an example. Let's say a floor walker can help one tech in one minute and we have two floor walkers. And let's say techs come for help at a rate of one every 30 seconds. If your tech goes to ask for help, he should be back in a minute. The queue now rises and one floor walker gets ordered to the phone and his first call takes 10 minutes which is about average. The first tech who asked a question is back at his desk after a minute which is expected, but the second tech had to wait 30 seconds extra, the 3rd tech, a minute, the 4th, 90 seconds, etc. Eventually some techs may give up and possibly go back and tell the customer something incorrect. So in the 10 minutes that the ordered to the phone floor walker has taken one call and the 10 callers, whose techs needed help, have had their calls extended a total of 12.5 extra minutes. Now how many customers have called in and have been on hold during those extra 12.5 minutes?

Now THAT'S the way to lower your ASA!!!
Brilliant!!!!

So when you are on hold for an extended amount of time, well, now you know why.
Management feels that making their goal and thus increase their end of the year bonus is more important than any inconvenience an individual customer may experience.

Or maybe they are just stupid.