What Scheduling Problems Are Contact Centres Facing?

We asked 294 contact centre professionals ‘What Is Your Biggest Scheduling Problem?’

This article is an extract from our ‘What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now’ 2022 survey report, which was sponsored by NICE.

What Is Your Biggest Scheduling Problem?

Absence and Lateness Is Causing Scheduling Chaos

Absence and lateness has jumped 34.7% to the number-one problem contact centres face when scheduling staff, pushing forecast volatility from the top spot.

With this now standing at 34.2% from 25.4% last year, over a third of contact centres see this as their biggest scheduling problem.

This jump is due to a number of factors, but most likely is the impact of employee dissatisfaction and lack of engagement, and it could even be a warning sign that staff are looking to change jobs if their working environment is not what they are looking for.

On a potentially related note, 10.8% of contact centre professionals also stated that requests for holidays and time off is their top scheduling problem.

This 27% increase could be a result of the end of restrictions, which has meant many social events have been rescheduled and people are once again able to go away, so it may not be indicative of a morale problem.

With 5.2% of contact centre professionals choosing “other”, their responses indicate the most common issues are related to attrition and recruitment challenges which have led to understaffing.

Contact Centres Have Risen to the Challenge

Contact centres appear to have made great strides in the last year, as problems with meeting service levels have dropped by 48.2% to 12.9%, and volatility has only increased by 2% from 29.0% to 29.6% in the last year.

As well as service delivery, contact centres also seem to be effectively getting user buy-in and user preference for schedules, as this has remained steady, with just 7.3% of contact centres citing this as their top scheduling problem.

Although this could be seen as a positive, the results do show that almost 63.8% of contact centres have put absence and lateness or volatility as their top scheduling problem.

With each of these having a knock-on effect on the others, contact centres need to focus on their employees to make sure they have the right staff, in at the right time, and that they treat them well.

This survey was done in partnership with NICE