I’ve been studying on the subject of customer service and support for awhile…not as long as some yet longer than others…but I recently ran up against a puzzler. I started reading about “shrinkage”.
Now, to me, and to others that have spent time in retail, this usually means lost and ripped off merchandise. In other words, the seemingly unavoidable shrinking of inventory through theft and customer or employee klutziness.
But the shrinkage I am reading about is somehow related to customer service and support. Maybe it means the rate of employee attrition? Or one of those group weight loss contests?
According to knowlagent’s Contact Center Shrinkage Survey 2010**, shrinkage is a term used to describe time that customer service agents spend that is not “phone talk time, approved after-call work, and other wait time.” Other terms include “rostered staff factor’ and “overlay”. Of 111 respondents, 85% preferred the term shinkage to those others.
So what activities, events, etc. can constitute shrinkage?
- training
- team meetings
- absenteeism
- one-on-one coaching
- vacation
- breaks
- tardiness
- projects
- paperwork
- paid holidays
- call follow-up work/research
- knowledge base review
- internal email review
- call backs
Quite a list. And that’s not all..it can be broken into two categories of shrinkage, both called “Loss”:
We have Primary Loss:
- absenteeism
- vacation
- paid holidays
- tardiness
- breaks and lunch
And Secondary Loss:
- training
- team meetings
- coaching
- projects
- paperwork
- call research
- knowledge base
- call backs
Is it just me, or does this all sound kinda negative? Several of these activities seem to me to be very necessary, but calling them all Loss and Shrinkage makes everything on these lists sound like something to root out of the department! Are we saying we don’t want CSRs to research their answers to customers? Not to have training? For managers or team leaders not to coach?
In any case, primary loss is outside the call center’s control while secondary loss can (and should) be reviewed and made more efficient since those are all activities that can be controlled.
But this does not mean telling the CSRs that they only have half the time to do paperwork than before. It means looking to see what paperwork can be tossed.
Team Meetings: Do they have to take up so much time? Can any part of it be replaced by some other mechanism of passing along information?
Training: highly necessary, but is the right training being offered?
Research: this is where having a centralized, up-to-date, searchable knowledge base comes in very handy.
So, OK, I understand the term and agree that many of these activities can be looked upon as being outside or deleterious to the call center’s main purpose, which is to take calls. I just hope it doesn’t make management believe all shrinkage is bad rather than something to maintain a proper balance of.
What are your thoughts? Anybody out there familiar with this term and the outcome of dealing with it? Leave us a comment.
**Registration required to receive paper.