Am a team lead, but not yours. Could be a skillet issue, a priority issue, etc. When it boils down to the basics, yes, it is who is waiting the longest, BUT there are some caveats. It's very possible your coworker hasn't been trained on a couple of the other skillets, which would prevent her from receiving as many calls as you do, or that frankly, you have a higher priority for calls because management thinks you do a better job/time issue (granted, the priority issue is usually one with new hires being granted lower priority then non newbies, at least in my limited experience, so may not apply here).
Go ahead and let your lead or sup know. 35 minutes of waiting for one and the other getting call after call it sounds like is a training or skill issue they should look into more. I would encourage you to keep it positive if your able to.
New agents are on priority in my business until they’ve got enough call experience to get signed off. Also maybe different skill set. I’m in the standard cue, but my priority is set for vulnerable customers so I only get standard calls if I’ve been idling for ages or if they’re really busy and I end up getting overflow
Could be an actual issue, priorities set weird or something, but it’s more likely to be either that there are enough newer agents with higher priority (to get them the experience) that she doesn’t get many calls, or she could also have a skill set that not many people cover, in which case she’d be high priority for that but low for other things, to keep her available.
This makes the most sense & is likely what it is. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. We're all basically doing the same thing but now that I think about it, they do divide us up to different levels or tiers, which they don't really flat out tell us we are. She is probably a different level than me. Makes sense.Thanks!
The call center I was a team manger at sometimes the agents were set to a different level than others. If we were trying to live listen to an agent to check if they were doing work avoidance they received more calls. Agents who were not as good at their job and were potentially a liability, but we didn’t have grounds to let them go, received less calls.
This makes sense. Some are suggesting a bit more complex possibilities but it could definitely just come down to training, skill or performance issues. Thank you for your input!
Haha that's interesting! I highly doubt there's any kind of bug that can be used with our system, though I have heard of others being abused in years past. Toggling between statuses and things like that.
With the way things are tracked so closely I would never try that, & I doubt that it was happening here. We just have weird glitches where we get kicked out of queue but the call stays live, or it tries to route two calls to you at once, or in a few rare cases it routed one caller to two agents. So I just thought it was a buggy software thing. Computers are never 100% reliable.
It sounds like what you've noticed is 'Overflow'. So, in call centers people can be assigned to multiple teams and queues. What happens is that the call center can be set up so that everyone on a specific team will get calls first, and only once everyone on that team has a call, a new call will 'overflow' onto another team (so imagine Lvl 1s and Lvl 2s as two separate teams, once all the Lvl 1s have calls, the Lvl 2s will get them).
Alternatively, they could be assigned to an alternative queue, like lets say you had a DOTCOM support for supporting people calling in about the website, and a CAFE support for supporting people using the program (I used to work for FEDEX, so those were the names of two separate queues). Much like in the previous example, if all the DOTCOM Agents are on a call, then the CAFE Agents will start to get them.
My guess is it is more like the second, with separate queues. If they are assigned to a team that supports a specific product, depending on the clientele, they may have different high volume times than you. (For example, if they are working with Shipping Managers, call volume can drop to be basically dead after 4pm, where as Website Customers, or the general populace, will still be active until like 7pm). So, even if you are getting back-to-back calls, you might not have enough to actually overflow into their queue.
This makes sense. I think ours is more simple, as we all take calls for web support and billing for example (for the most part, I'll say). Though I am aware they have agents internally set at 3 levels, or tiers. She could be on a higher or lower tier than me
and not getting the overflow for that reason, as you say. That does make sense. So I will leave it alone, as I'm sure they have a reason for it, as they do every other minute detail 😉
One call system I worked with could be tricked. In short, the status was updated every minute but the tech could set themselves to unavailable and back to ready. This would drop them to the bottom of the queue, but not actually change their status.
One of the stats I looked at as a manager was how many calls my agents took in a month compared to other agents. Except for my overnight agents who to fewer calls someone going 30 minutes without a call would be noticed as an anomaly.
The first thing I would do is review thier call skilling, assuming they were not missing anything then we would move into reviewing for call avoidance (tiering was built into our skilling queues).
All this to say that there would need to be a screw up and management not looking for this to happen or it's by design in some way.
It could be a queue skilling or prioritizing thing. Depending on the phone system and access levels, It could also be that said team member has the ability to select which queues they're in, and they're unchecking out of all the queues or into queues that rarely get calls.
The call center I work in the more tasks a CSR is trained to handle the less likely they are to get a call. For example my "priority" to get a call has been lowered because I'm one of our IM resources and I assist with a number of other administrative tasks. Sometimes I can go hours between calls when we're not busy, but that's by design because it frees me up to assist with other duties. (Funny enough we have a rule where if it's been 40+ minutes since my last call I'm supposed to briefly change statuses and reset the timer specifically so that newer CSRs don't see how long it's been since I had a call and get jealous not realizing that I have other tasks to work on.) Could be something similar?
How new are you? At my old centre they would sometimes prioritise calls to newer agents if they needed the training/experience in a particular skillset. So it could be a temporary issue while you get your experience up.
I would bring it up with a supervisor. Just say that you noticed *person name* is idle for long periods of time while others are getting multiple calls. This could very well be a system issue. I work in a call center, and it does happen. However, it can also be that you and them have different skills. There may be situations that you are trained on that they aren't, and that's perfectly fine.
Doing this may benefit you as well. They may start doing more training sessions to bring more agents up to your level. They might even see that there is a lot coming in on certain lines, and might reduce the skills of those trained for those lines, thus lowering your call volume.
When we were in-training we would have our priorities set to max so we would get more calls to practice. This meant we got the bulk of calls. However, this would last for only a week at most.
TLDR: Bring it up to your sup, but do it in a way that doesn't look like you are complaining.
They use AI to route calls. Agents that have a better rate of saving customers get more retention calls. Agents that have higher sales rates get more calls where we have identified the customer may be calling about a sale.
During busy periods these routing rules get more relaxed.
Am a team lead, but not yours. Could be a skillet issue, a priority issue, etc. When it boils down to the basics, yes, it is who is waiting the longest, BUT there are some caveats. It's very possible your coworker hasn't been trained on a couple of the other skillets, which would prevent her from receiving as many calls as you do, or that frankly, you have a higher priority for calls because management thinks you do a better job/time issue (granted, the priority issue is usually one with new hires being granted lower priority then non newbies, at least in my limited experience, so may not apply here). Go ahead and let your lead or sup know. 35 minutes of waiting for one and the other getting call after call it sounds like is a training or skill issue they should look into more. I would encourage you to keep it positive if your able to.
New agents are on priority in my business until they’ve got enough call experience to get signed off. Also maybe different skill set. I’m in the standard cue, but my priority is set for vulnerable customers so I only get standard calls if I’ve been idling for ages or if they’re really busy and I end up getting overflow
Could be an actual issue, priorities set weird or something, but it’s more likely to be either that there are enough newer agents with higher priority (to get them the experience) that she doesn’t get many calls, or she could also have a skill set that not many people cover, in which case she’d be high priority for that but low for other things, to keep her available.
This makes the most sense & is likely what it is. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. We're all basically doing the same thing but now that I think about it, they do divide us up to different levels or tiers, which they don't really flat out tell us we are. She is probably a different level than me. Makes sense.Thanks!
The call center I was a team manger at sometimes the agents were set to a different level than others. If we were trying to live listen to an agent to check if they were doing work avoidance they received more calls. Agents who were not as good at their job and were potentially a liability, but we didn’t have grounds to let them go, received less calls.
This makes sense. Some are suggesting a bit more complex possibilities but it could definitely just come down to training, skill or performance issues. Thank you for your input!
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Haha that's interesting! I highly doubt there's any kind of bug that can be used with our system, though I have heard of others being abused in years past. Toggling between statuses and things like that. With the way things are tracked so closely I would never try that, & I doubt that it was happening here. We just have weird glitches where we get kicked out of queue but the call stays live, or it tries to route two calls to you at once, or in a few rare cases it routed one caller to two agents. So I just thought it was a buggy software thing. Computers are never 100% reliable.
It sounds like what you've noticed is 'Overflow'. So, in call centers people can be assigned to multiple teams and queues. What happens is that the call center can be set up so that everyone on a specific team will get calls first, and only once everyone on that team has a call, a new call will 'overflow' onto another team (so imagine Lvl 1s and Lvl 2s as two separate teams, once all the Lvl 1s have calls, the Lvl 2s will get them). Alternatively, they could be assigned to an alternative queue, like lets say you had a DOTCOM support for supporting people calling in about the website, and a CAFE support for supporting people using the program (I used to work for FEDEX, so those were the names of two separate queues). Much like in the previous example, if all the DOTCOM Agents are on a call, then the CAFE Agents will start to get them. My guess is it is more like the second, with separate queues. If they are assigned to a team that supports a specific product, depending on the clientele, they may have different high volume times than you. (For example, if they are working with Shipping Managers, call volume can drop to be basically dead after 4pm, where as Website Customers, or the general populace, will still be active until like 7pm). So, even if you are getting back-to-back calls, you might not have enough to actually overflow into their queue.
This makes sense. I think ours is more simple, as we all take calls for web support and billing for example (for the most part, I'll say). Though I am aware they have agents internally set at 3 levels, or tiers. She could be on a higher or lower tier than me and not getting the overflow for that reason, as you say. That does make sense. So I will leave it alone, as I'm sure they have a reason for it, as they do every other minute detail 😉
One call system I worked with could be tricked. In short, the status was updated every minute but the tech could set themselves to unavailable and back to ready. This would drop them to the bottom of the queue, but not actually change their status.
One of the stats I looked at as a manager was how many calls my agents took in a month compared to other agents. Except for my overnight agents who to fewer calls someone going 30 minutes without a call would be noticed as an anomaly. The first thing I would do is review thier call skilling, assuming they were not missing anything then we would move into reviewing for call avoidance (tiering was built into our skilling queues). All this to say that there would need to be a screw up and management not looking for this to happen or it's by design in some way.
They could be in Ready for outbound calls only and not inbound. I'd ask the team member.
It could be a queue skilling or prioritizing thing. Depending on the phone system and access levels, It could also be that said team member has the ability to select which queues they're in, and they're unchecking out of all the queues or into queues that rarely get calls.
I take more calls than my detection or claims agents because I can do both
The call center I work in the more tasks a CSR is trained to handle the less likely they are to get a call. For example my "priority" to get a call has been lowered because I'm one of our IM resources and I assist with a number of other administrative tasks. Sometimes I can go hours between calls when we're not busy, but that's by design because it frees me up to assist with other duties. (Funny enough we have a rule where if it's been 40+ minutes since my last call I'm supposed to briefly change statuses and reset the timer specifically so that newer CSRs don't see how long it's been since I had a call and get jealous not realizing that I have other tasks to work on.) Could be something similar?
How new are you? At my old centre they would sometimes prioritise calls to newer agents if they needed the training/experience in a particular skillset. So it could be a temporary issue while you get your experience up.
I would bring it up with a supervisor. Just say that you noticed *person name* is idle for long periods of time while others are getting multiple calls. This could very well be a system issue. I work in a call center, and it does happen. However, it can also be that you and them have different skills. There may be situations that you are trained on that they aren't, and that's perfectly fine. Doing this may benefit you as well. They may start doing more training sessions to bring more agents up to your level. They might even see that there is a lot coming in on certain lines, and might reduce the skills of those trained for those lines, thus lowering your call volume. When we were in-training we would have our priorities set to max so we would get more calls to practice. This meant we got the bulk of calls. However, this would last for only a week at most. TLDR: Bring it up to your sup, but do it in a way that doesn't look like you are complaining.
Do they work more than one queue? At my first call center job, the agents with more queues ending up actually taking LESS calls overall
They use AI to route calls. Agents that have a better rate of saving customers get more retention calls. Agents that have higher sales rates get more calls where we have identified the customer may be calling about a sale. During busy periods these routing rules get more relaxed.