Call Center Operation: Design, Operation, and Maintenance
Gives complete coverage of the critical issues involved in the design, implementation, organization, and management of a customer call center.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Call Center Operation: Design, Operation, and Maintenance
3.6 Service level a core value
3.6 Service level a core value
At the heart of effective incoming call center management is the principle of service level. A service level objective can be used to determine the resources required and the effectiveness of the center in its impact on the corporate business goals. Here are some of the questions that can be answered by establishing and monitoring a specified level of service:
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How accessible is the call center?
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How much staff is required?
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How does the center compare to the competition?
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Can the center handle the response to marketing campaigns?
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How busy will the CSRs be?
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What will the costs be?
Defining a service level
Service level is often referred to by various terms. In some call centers, it is the telephone service factor, or TSF. Others refer to it as grade of service (GOS), although this may be confused with the term for the degree of blocking on a group of trunks. Service level is also referred to as accessibility or service standard. Typically, the term service level is used to refer specifically to transactions that must be handled on arrival at the call center. Response time, often called speed of reply, may even be called service level as well. To avoid confusion, response time will be used in a specific sense in this book, to describe the level of service assigned to transactions that can be handled at a later time and do not need to be...
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