Call Centre Headcount Ratios

Call Centre Headcount Ratios

I work for a fairly large employer in the service industry and we recently consolidated all of our customer service centres (CRC’s) into 3 large call centres (in the U.S.).

Since this is fairly new to our company, we’re struggling with forecasting the amount of headcount needed to manage the centres. We’ll have roughly 1000 customer service reps spread evenly across all 3 centres.

We’re attempting to figure out how many people we need to hire in each of the call centres. Assuming we’d have 1000 customer service reps, how many of each job function do you recommend having? I listed the following job functions we’re posting. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

(1) Associate (customer service reps)

(2) Supervisors

(3) Managers

(4) Knowledge Management Analyst

(5) Workforce Analyst

(6) Reporting Analyst

(7) Online Specialist

(8) Escalation Specialist

(9) Customer Credit Specialist

(10) Customer Data Specialist

(11) Trainers – people actually on-boarding the rep’s

Question asked by Zachary

It Varies Considerably

It does vary considerably. As a starting point

(1) Associate (customer service reps) 1000

(2) Supervisors 125 (ratio 1:8)

(3) Managers 16 (ratio 1:8)

(4) Knowledge Management Analyst – 4

(5) Workforce Analyst – 4

(6) Reporting Analyst -2

(7) Online Specialist ?? No idea

(8) Escalation Specialist ?? No idea

(9) Customer Credit Specialist – This depends upon the numbers that you need – perhaps a team of 12

(10) Customer Data Specialist – ?Maybe 4 – depends how clean your data is

(11) Trainers – people actually on-boarding the rep’s – 16 (roughly 1 trainer for 6 people)

What you have missed off is your quality team, who will do the call scoring evaluations

With thanks to Jonty

Great, Thanks Jonty!…

Great, thanks Jonty! For a QA team, what do you typically recommend? We were thinking a team of about 18 for 1,000 reps, so a ratio of 1:55.

With thanks to Zachary

How Many Hours of Call Coaching Do You Want Per Agent Per Month?

I would suggest you work out how many hours of call coaching do you want per agent per month. If it is 1 hour per month (which would be the minimum) then the 1:55 ratio would probably work. If it is more then you will probably need a higher ratio.

With thanks to Jonty