Are Small Contact Centres Really at a Disadvantage?

Chris Dealy explores whether the challenges of running a small contact centre are any different from those of running a large one.

From the outside, small call centres look just the same as large ones. Small companies can publish 0800 numbers, they can build professional-looking websites, they can offer live webchat and they often have a strong social media presence.

This is great, but in creating an impressive storefront, small operations are creating a rod for their own backs. Customers will expect good service level around the clock – which is much more difficult for a small centre than a large one.

The same goals need to be achieved with fewer staff

If you are running a small call centre, you probably want to deliver a great customer experience while not burning out your agents.

You want the centre to be efficient and productive. If it is a sales operation you want to maximise revenue. These are exactly the same goals that large call centres have. The difference is that you have to do it with fewer staff and less IT.

Small contact centres require multi-talented agents

Small centres can actually be more complicated than large ones. A large call centre can afford to have agents who specialise in one line of business, or divide agents into sales and service teams.

Small call centres often can’t afford to do this, instead requiring agents to be multi-talented generalists.

Planning for a multi-skilled workforce using pen-and-paper or spreadsheets is a nightmare, because there is no simple calculation of the number of staff needed when each agent has a different skill set and the peaks and troughs in contact volume are different for each channel.

Small call volumes are more volatile

In a small contact centre, being understaffed by just one agent can have a huge impact on Service Level achievement. Large call centres have the luxury of safety-in-numbers; one agent over or under doesn’t make very much difference.

This is what underlies the concept called The Power of One. Large call volumes tend to smooth out workload, whereas small call volumes are more volatile – reducing agent productivity and occupancy, thus increasing the average cost per call for small centres.

Managers get to know the strengths and weaknesses of each individual

So far it sounds like the big centres have all the luck. But there are ‘diseconomies of scale’, which favour small centres over large ones. In a small centre, agents and managers work closely together. Managers get to know the strengths and weaknesses of each individual and can deliver needed coaching ad hoc.

Knowledge is constantly shared without the need for formal training and agents don’t feel uncomfortable in asking for help. There is usually a flat management structure, leading to quick decisions, rapid access to experts and greater agility and discretion when dealing with customer issues.

Large organisations often suffer from ‘silo thinking’. The classic example is Marketing forgetting to tell the call centre about campaigns, which are only known to the call centre when call volumes go through the roof.

The cloud has made the best technology affordable for everyone

The cloud has democratised call centre technology. Now even small call centres can get access to sophisticated applications without needing big capex (capital expenditure) budgets or heavy IT projects.

True cloud vendors are delivering leading-edge solutions at affordable, pay-as-you-go prices. Cloud applications can be accessed with just a web browser and don’t require the purchase of servers. Innovations are continuously deployed without the customer needing to lift a finger; there is no annual disruptive ‘big bang’ update – or expensive annual maintenance fee.

You can also flex capacity (and spend) up and down every month according to business need, e.g. scaling up for the Christmas peak and scaling down again in January. This is all great news for small centres.

With thanks to Chris Dealy at injixo