Call center productivity declines when agents spend too much time doing things besides serving customers. Tasks like excessive training, post-call work, and meetings prevent agents from having enough time to do their jobs.
This wasted time is called shrinkage, which can kill your call center efficiency.
This article will discuss everything you need to know about call center shrinkage, including causes, how to calculate, and how to reduce it.
What is Call Center Shrinkage?
Call center shrinkage is a workforce management metric measuring the percentage of agents’ paid working hours when they’re unavailable to serve customers. Shrinkage includes everything that prevents staff from serving customers: vacations, sick days, lateness, excessive training, meetings, post-call work, breaks, and more.
Tracking shrinkage helps you accurately forecast staffing needs and schedule enough agents. It also helps you monitor call center efficiency and productivity, identifying factors preventing staff from doing their jobs.
Factors that Lead to Call Center Shrinkage
Call center shrinkage is caused by everything that takes time away from paid agents serving customers. This includes days off, coming in late to work, meetings, idle chat with coworkers, post-call follow-up time, and more.
It’s important to consider all the factors that may be causing shrinkage in your contact center so you can get a more accurate picture of staff productivity and the factors that reduce it.
Here are the factors that contribute to call center shrinkage:
- Paid time off: Vacation days, sick leave, maternity leave
- Absenteeism and lateness: Staff not showing up to work, showing up late, or leaving work early
- Training: All hours that an employee spends training and onboarding
- Staff obligations: Team meetings, one-on-one meetings, staff events
- Post-call and pre-call work: Any follow-up or preparatory work that staff need to do, such as updating call logs or customer information
- Idle or personal time: Time spent chatting with coworkers, personal calls, or other emergencies that detract from serving customers
How to Track Shrinkage in Call Centers?
Track call center shrinkage by monitoring agent status and attendance throughout the work week. Monitor when an agent logs in and out, how much of their shift they spend actively on-call vs. other activities, and how many work-week hours they miss for any reason.
Call center software and CRM systems include workforce optimization (WFO) technology that tracks agent attendance and activity status–including on-call, post-call, idle but available, lunch or break, in a meeting, and other statuses you can customize. It tracks the time of day, giving supervisors a to-the-minute view of shrinkage and activity.
Adherence monitoring capabilities note when an agent’s behavior doesn’t match their schedule, recording the total number of minutes an agent spends off-task. Managers can sort this information for individual agents or the whole contact center, and over custom timeframes.
How to Calculate Call Center Shrinkage?
To calculate call center shrinkage, add up the total number of weekly paid hours agents cannot serve customers, then divide it by the total number of weekly paid hours for all agents. Multiply this number by 100 to determine your call center shrinkage percentage.
To determine the total number of weekly paid hours that agents are unable to serve customers, add up all the factors that contribute to shrinkage:
- Average number of hours lost per week due to absenteeism
- Hours lost per week from meetings, lunch, breaks, staff events, idle time
- Hours lost per week due to pre-call and after-call work
For example, if your call center has 10 full-time agents each paid for 40 hours per week, you have 400 total paid hours per week. If each agent loses 12 hours per week on average to shrinkage, that means 120 total hours of shrinkage per week: (120/400) x 100 = 30% shrinkage.
Many call centers consider 30-35% a healthy shrinkage rate, but average shrinkage rates can range from 20% to 50%, depending on the industry.
Why Shrinkage is Bad for a Call Center
Shrinkage is bad for a call center because it indicates inefficiency and a lack of agent productivity. Inefficiency means wasted money, longer wait times, and frustrated customers.
Lack of Productivity
A higher shrinkage indicates an overall lack of call center productivity. This may signal that your agents aren’t focused on their jobs or that management is scheduling too many activities that prevent agents from providing customer support.
Wasted Money
A high shrinkage means wasted money and that you’re likely staffing more agents than necessary. Reduced call center shrinkage means more productivity from fewer agents–helping your paid salaries go further.
Longer Wait Times
The less time your agents have to serve customers, the fewer customers your call center serves per minute. This leads to longer queue wait times, excessive hold times, and slower service.
Frustrated Customers
Slower service leads to frustrated customers and reduced customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. It’s important to avoid customer frustration, as 88% of customers say they’d buy again from companies that provide good service.
How to Reduce Call Center Shrinkage?
Reduce call center shrinkage by integrating a CRM platform, reducing the number of extra obligations placed on agents, and tracking agent adherence with call center software. Call center workflow automations and \appropriate staffing levels can further optimize efficiency.
Reduce Extraneous Obligations for Agents
Some of the biggest contributors to call center shrinkage are extra activities and demands placed on agents. These include staff meetings, coaching sessions, training programs, and other extraneous events like staff parties.
While these activities are necessary and often beneficial to workplace culture, they need to be appropriately balanced with agent work time.
Automate Call Center Workflows
Advanced call center software lets you automate workflows like routing tasks to the appropriate agent, notifying staff about relevant updates, dialing customers, and responding to missed calls or texts.
These automations save agents hours of work per week, reducing shrinkage.
Utilize AI for Post-Call Work and Workforce Management
Call center software’s built-in AI tools streamline agent tasks by summarizing calls, extracting highlights and action items, and automatically replying to messages and texts. These automations reduce agent post-call work time, cutting down on shrinkage.
This is why 81% of workers say AI helps them feel more prepared to deliver a strong customer service level.
Integrate a CRM Platform
Connecting call center workforce software with a third-party CRM platform, like Salesforce or Hubspot, lets you synchronize data like call records, customer interaction histories, and recent purchases. Synchronizing this data across platforms reduces post-call work time.
Ensure Appropriate Staffing Levels
If you staff a higher number of agents than necessary, they may spend the majority of their workday idle. On the other hand, agents in understaffed call centers may become burnt out, leading to a worse customer experience.
AI workforce management (WFM) tracks call volume to anticipate staffing needs and schedule agents automatically. This helps you avoid overstaffing, ensuring agents are more efficient with their paid work hours.
Minimize Shrinkage to Improve Productivity
Call center shrinkage is productivity’s opposite: wasted time, money, and agent energy. By tracking agent adherence with call center software and taking the steps mentioned above, you can reduce shrinkage in your call center to make your customer service more efficient.
