A practical guide

As workforce management software and processes have continued to develop over the years, the measurement and management of shrinkage has become an increasingly important process in the contact centre.

Shrinkage can be one of the more elusive metrics in a contact centre, but don't underestimate its power. If properly measured and managed, the use of shrinkage can enable contact centre leaders to achieve the ideal balance of productive and unproductive time.

In its simplest form, it is the “unproductive” time in a contact centre that actually “shrinks” the productive time that agents are available to serve customers. This unproductive time includes all offline time where agents are not serving customers, such as in-office time for breaks, meetings, training, etc, as well as out-of-office time for vacations, sick days and other types of leave.

While these offline activities are often necessary and even beneficial to the contact centre business, they are considered unproductive since they reduce the actual productivity of the contact centre and require additional staff to offset the reduced productivity.

In order to consistently meet service level objectives, contact centres need to add staff beyond their productive or base staff. Shrinkage therefore is occasionally called the “roster-staff factor”, given the extra staffing required to “roster-up” base staff to cover the amount of shrinkage expected.

One of the main reasons shrinkage can be so elusive to measure is because no industry standard exists on how to measure it. Therefore, a contact centre must incorporate several different considerations, based on its specific configuration, to determine the most appropriate way to measure shrinkage.

Shrinkage can be one of the more elusive metrics in a contact centre, but don't underestimate its power.

Dave Paulding is Interactive Intelligence's regional sales manager for UK and Africa.

In most cases, measuring shrinkage involves using data from the workforce management system, and may also include data from the ACD. There also are several ways to look at shrinkage data that assist in the analysis of shrinkage as a whole, for example, by comparing paid shrinkage to unpaid shrinkage.

To fully utilise this data, it should additionally be segmented into planned and unplanned events. The separation of shrinkage into these categories is an especially important part of the workforce management process in that, to some extent, a company will need to plan and account for any unplanned events in the forecasting and scheduling process. Some contact centres also find it helpful to measure their controllable and uncontrollable shrinkage.

Much like the various methods of measuring shrinkage, there is also no industry standard when it comes to establishing a goal for shrinkage. Most often, shrinkage goals are based on a combination of what's necessary for the business and what's affordable based on the budget.

In an ideal world, the contact centre's long-term or capacity planning process should include shrinkage as a part of the planning and budget approval process. Taking such an approach ensures a contact centre has built enough unproductive time into its staffing plan to accommodate all unproductive needs.

While actual shrinkage may be something a contact centre uses as a data point for review when selecting a goal, it should not be used as a base for setting a goal.

As a general benchmark, contact centres experience between 25% and 35% shrinkage, including both planned and unplanned shrinkage. Of course, some contact centres choose to run below 25% and others above 35% based on the needs of their business, although most centres fall somewhere in between. If the contact centre does land within this wide variance, it is important to consider the impact that shrinkage can have on the overall business, including both customer and employee satisfaction when selecting a goal.

There are several areas where management of shrinkage can be a great value. The first of these is the role shrinkage plays in the workforce management process for forecasting and scheduling.

Whether using a full-featured workforce management software package or Microsoft Excel, shrinkage is a critical component of ensuring the schedules built are the most efficient schedules capable of meeting the service level delivery objective.

In the best environments, shrinkage is measured and managed at the interval level so the various unproductive patterns that usually vary by time and day can be planned for.

It's important that leaders and employees alike understand the impact that shrinkage can have on the business if it is not effectively managed, and the benefit it can bring when executed correctly.

One of the easiest ways to convey the importance of shrinkage is to document each business process on which shrinkage has an impact. Then incorporate documented examples in training sessions with new and existing leaders and employees.

Unfortunately, documenting standard processes is a low priority for most contact centre leaders, and often ends up on the backburner as a “spare-time” activity.

However, the successful measurement and management of shrinkage remains one of the core pieces of the workforce management process, and it can assist contact centre leaders dramatically in achieving service level delivery goals, while ensuring they have the unproductive time necessary to maintain their business.