How Shifton Can Improve Call Center Performance

Call center managers need to monitor the workflow and control the execution of the plan by the operators daily. One of their most important tasks is to create and maintain the call center schedules.

Since customers can be located all over the world, there should always be operators in the call center who work according to the subscribers’ local time. Call center managers should consider the work schedules and the number of operators on each shift when creating their monthly schedules. Otherwise, mistakes with working hours, shifts, and distribution of employees are inevitable.

How Shifton Enhances Call Center Performance

1. Shifton Supports All Schedule Types

• Operators can work in two shifts, 8 hours a day, with a fixed lunch break four hours after the start of the shift.
• This schedule format also assumes an 8-hour workday with a fixed start time for a call center employee.
• Operators can take a lunch break and request breaks at any time during their working day.
• Operators can work in 4/8 hour shifts, determining the start of their working day and taking breaks during shifts.

This type of work schedule not only cuts the cost of call center staff by almost 25% but also significantly improves productivity. Shifton can handle all these types of work schedules, supporting flexible start times, break requests, and time off. With Shifton, call center managers can create schedules for any number of departments and employees.

2. Shifton Helps Maintain the Working Schedule

A call center schedule must be composed so that breaks, lunches, meetings, and other events do not disrupt the workflow. After the primary setup, Shifton will automatically build your schedules so that operator breaks do not overlap. While several operators take a break, others continue to work. Thus, using the Shifton app helps eliminate downtime and maintain the schedule structure.

3. Shifton Allows Instant Schedule Updates

If call center employees do not feel at least a little freedom, they may lose interest in work over time. With Shifton, managers can distribute shifts so that operators work fewer days a week but with full hours. Additionally, if necessary (e.g., during lockdowns), employees can have flexible start and end times for shifts and even work from home on certain days or full-time.

4. Shifton Tracks and Evaluates Call Center Performance

Analyzing statistics in CRM is essential for proper scheduling in a call center. Shifton offers powerful reporting tools that display statistics on call center performance from various perspectives. Customizable modules not only display data in reports but also allow forecasts on costs, hours, and more, helping optimize company processes.

5. Shifton Supports Integration with Other Programs

No matter what software you use for employee management, accounting, and work tracking, Shifton simplifies your life. The Shifton app offers integration capabilities with many popular programs to improve workflows, exchange data, and provide API access for various integrations. Since Shifton integrates with other programs (e.g., Quickbooks), management gains access to all necessary reports—on working hours, shifts, salaries, fines, and bonuses.

Looking for new integrations or features? Tell us about your needs, and Shifton will suggest a suitable solution.

With Shifton, a call center manager can effectively create schedules for any number of departments and employees with just a few clicks. Shifton’s available features and integrations allow you to use this application as a single program for completing and tracking daily tasks in the call center.

*All original photographs courtesy of DialogMarket call center. The review of Shifton by DialogMarket executive manager can be found here.

We bring to your attention another real review from one of our first clients – DialogMarket call center.

Shifton: Hello! Please tell us about the specifics of your company.

Alyona: Hello! My name is Alyona Peshekhonova, and I am the head of the outsourcing call center DialogMarket, based in Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine. Our call center focuses on providing hotline and customer support services. A unique feature of DialogMarket is our ability to quickly launch startups and increase the number of operators on shift with just one day’s notice.

Shifton: What are your daily responsibilities?

Alyona: My main tasks as a manager include providing instant support to customers and responding to their requests and orders. I also control the number of people on each shift and am responsible for the smart distribution of shifts between operators, depending on peak load periods in each project. Operating 24/7, 365 days a year, requires properly and wisely designed schedules, especially as the project size increases.

Shifton: What are the most common challenges you face in running a call center?

Alyona: When managing a project with 40-50 people, we encountered challenges in creating schedules that suit both our customers and staff. Now, imagine developing an effective weekly or monthly schedule for 300 people! If someone gets sick, leaves, or can only work certain hours or days, it disrupts everything. It’s like a house of cards—if one employee falls out, everything has to be rebuilt from scratch!

Shifton: How did you get started with Shifton?

Alyona: We chose Shifton after evaluating dozens of scheduling options. You’ve made our lives much easier.

Shifton: What features of Shifton do you consider most useful for daily operations?

Alyona: Employees really appreciate the shift-swapping feature, and most importantly, schedules are now compiled in just a few clicks! We also have no issues tracking sick leaves and vacations.

Shifton: How did the workflow in DialogMarket change after starting with Shifton?

Alyona: I always aim to create a comprehensible salary calculation system for employees. Shifton makes this even easier. The Payroll Reports module allows me to maintain transparency in payroll accounting at DialogMarket. Each call center employee can always know how much they’ve earned in a given month and can plan their expenses in advance.

Shifton: Would you recommend Shifton to other call centers?

Alyona: Definitely yes! This application is equally useful for both large and small outsourcing call centers and other businesses.

Greetings to our subscribers and everyone who came to the Shifton company page by chance. Today we offer an interview with one of our customers – the owner of a cafe chain, who has been using Shifton online service for quite a long time.

Shifton: Hello. Let’s get acquainted!

Irina: Hello! My name is Irina Uskova , I own and manage a chain of coffee shops Coffee Molly in Nizhny Novgorod (Russia).

Shifton: Tell us a bit more about your business.

Irina: By the beginning of 2021, the company had more than 20 bartenders with different degrees of occupation. Coffee Molly has been operating in the city since 2014, developing the concept of coffee shops for office workers. Today, there are seven coffee houses in Nizhny Novgorod with a total turnover of 25 million rubles per year.

Shifton: Why did you decide to partner with Shifton?

Irina: The market specificity is such that our employees are quite young people, and therefore they often change jobs. For most of them it’s their first job. Therefore, work with personnel takes a lot of time and includes selection of applicants, training, mentoring and professional development.

It has long been clear to me that this process should be taken lightly, since the main point is to preserve the main «backbone» of bartenders – 5-6 people. They help newcomers to adapt quickly and easily.

All this ebullient activity affects the work schedule on a daily basis, so it should be promptly monitored, and in case of changes, everyone must be notified immediately.

Shifton: How have you dealt with these issues before?

Irina: Previously, we sent updates in a general chat, sometimes we had to call employees personally in order to make sure that they were aware of the changes. But the more coffee shops we opened, the more we needed to automate the whole routine.

Shifton: Does your company need an automated online scheduling service?

Irina: Of course, those who follow the trends are aware that the food services market is adapting IT-technologies more and more. Working on schedules is a daily routine of the administrator and senior baristas. As part of scheduling, they should take into account preferences of employees (personal matters, second job, etc.), the efficiency of the bartender at a particular coffee shop and the specifics of the day (weekend or weekday). In addition, we need to organize training for newbies, conduct an inventory or general cleaning, find a replacement for the sick, or divide the shift between two employees. And of course, we should take into account all possible delays and overtime.

We had automated this process for a long time, but the growth of the company went on, and I wanted something more than just a program that would set work schedules. I was looking for partner developers who would make it so that the program could also work as a payroll for each employee. There were even more ideas…

Shifton: Did your expectations come true as the cooperation with Shifton expanded?

Irina: Yes, I totally feel good with it! Frankly speaking, when I accidentally found Shifton it took me a while to notice how flexible this product can be.

At the testing stage, I asked many questions about what else is planned to be implemented and what functions Shifton offers, so that employees at every minute of time would be confident in their work schedule and know in advance the sum that they will receive at the end of each month. I wanted the payroll to be performed without delays, and to be carried out in real time mode and be available to a person on his smartphone at any given moment, and not only on the payday.

Shifton: Did you manage to fulfill your requests? How satisfied are you with the support from Shifton developers?

Irina: All my requests were fulfilled, and I also realised that the program can be modernized further according to our needs. I closely communicated with the developers for 6 months and told them what we like and what else we expect to see. We implemented the program quickly and immediately realized that we wanted to use it more and more and customize it for our needs.

Shifton: Have you succeeded so far?

Irina: We managed to accomplish the following points: we automated the schedule for each employee, taking into account their preferences, assigned bartenders to branches, and adjusted the calculation of bonuses and fines. We also eliminated errors in salary calculations, when some shifts were not taken into account or were paid for twice. We also installed the application on the smartphones of all employees, where they instantly receive notifications on updates and payroll. We also reduced the time spent on scheduling by 10 times, and reduced turnover, since employees see their shifts/salary and can influence them, so in general we improved the time planning process for all employees.

Shifton: For sure you have more suggestions on the customization of the Shifton tool?

Irina: Yes, of course. We are waiting for a more user-friendly interface for making changes in the schedules. Now not all details can be changed, and to adjust certain parameters, you need to create everything anew. We are waiting for more flexible settings in salary reports for general periods and the option to leave comments on work. As for the service functions, we need the option for employees to leave comments and draw up reports on the accomplished tasks in the application. I am also interested in the automatic calculation of bonuses depending on sales indicators or KPI fulfillment and more flexible settings of the application interface for the convenience of employees: what to display on the main screen, what notifications to send, and what to report on.

Shifton: Thank you for your detailed and informative feedback, Irina. Can you recommend Shifton online service to owners of other companies?

Irina: I already recommend the tool to my customers, whom I help to launch their coffee shops, since Shifton helps to save money, it is easy to use and my employees like it. Before starting to use Shifton, I thoroughly tested more than 10 different applications and programs. By the time I found Shifton, I’ve already agreed with a developer who was ready to create a similar program for us. And Shifton completely solved all my issues with scheduling and automation of payroll.

Shifton service developers added a feature that allows to dismiss company employees. This can be done on the Employees page. To fire an employee and delete him from the list of company employees, one must click the «Dismiss» icon in the form of a yellow «x».

When dismissing an employee, one must select the date from which he won’t have access to the company. Starting from the selected date, an employee won’t be able to enter his account from any device. With that said, the system will save all information about a fired employee.

At first, it seems that there is nothing easier than making an employee work schedule. All you have to do is input employee surnames into an Excel document, set a couple of parameters and variables, and press Enter. In reality, things are a bit different. Creating daily work schedules, especially shift work schedules, for some form of enterprise is an arduous and responsible job placed on accountants or HR specialists.

What goals can you achieve with a properly composed employee work schedule?

• Arrange employee working hours at the enterprise

• Ensure that certain work obligations are met by workers

• Properly calculate the income of the company

• Determine the average salary of individual workers and the entire enterprise

• And of course, a properly made work timetable means that fewer mistakes will be made on the accountants part when calculating salary and vacation pay

Many businesses can’t successfully provide their services or exist in the first place without the shift work schedule. Convenience stores, hotels, hospitals, rescue services, police departments and confectionery factories – the list of enterprises that depend on it can go on forever, but not many people know which difficulties HR managers face when making progress on shift work schedules. During this process, human resources experts have to renew all of the details in the account, including vacations, sick leaves, state holidays, overtime and many other components. No to mention that an unforeseen event can happen after the timetable has been approved, and the HR manager will have to hastily start working on the schedule from scratch.

Working on daily work schedules with Shifton

Shifton is an optimal service for easy and fast online employee scheduling that has many advantages. It was created in order to make work easier for CEO’s, accountants and HR managers. Here are some of the features the service offers:

• You don’t have to manage the work process all by yourself. Delegating the right to create and edit work timetables to company administrators;

• Shifton service will help you create a shift work schedule for an unlimited number of employees in order to gain the most out of work timetables;

• Shifton features allow tweaking work schedules while bearing in mind such data as the number of shifts, employees, and workdays;

• While creating and editing work schedules, you will be able to allow swapping shifts between users with or without management supervision;

• When unexpected things do happen, you will be able to make quick adjustments to the timetable.

• If you use Shifton, you will be notified about changes in the timetables and new company events.

Shiftonservice provides free technical support available 24/7. You can contact our operators at any time you need and get answers to any questions you might have. Another vital part of the service is the fact that Shifton allows the creation of work schedules for both small enterprises and huge corporations that staff thousands of workers.

Shifton gets regularly updated and tries to keep up with the times. You should also improve yourself. Stop wasting time on manual employee scheduling when there is a convenient and high-quality service that is specifically tailored to save your working time.

We often face the notion of planning in our daily lives. Once a year we meticulously and thoroughly plan our trips, less often thinking about changing our workplace or celebrating anniversaries and wedding days. Of course, almost all of us plan how the monthly budget should be spent and how family funds are going to be distributed. Unfortunately, many business owners and top position employees forget about the necessity of forecasting labor demand. What’s even more interesting is that there are CEOs who don’t utilize professional HR managers. They conduct interviews and manage employees all by themselves. This article will try to explain what workforce demand forecasting is and prove that this is a necessary and crucial part of running any company.

We all understand that it is harder to achieve success without qualified personnel than it is with a team of experts. This is why a CEO or an HR manager must properly estimate workforce demand, select the most efficient calculation methods and find sources of covering this need before looking for new employees. But before we get there, we have to start with the basics and understand what forecasting labor demand means.

Workforce demand forecasting is a part of a bigger workforce planning process. Its main goal is making a list of necessary positions and experts that can become vital in growing company business, achieving goals and milestones in the near future.

Workforce planning goals:

• Providing the company with necessary employees while keeping low time and financial costs;

• Keeping the business supplied with proper, professional workers in the shortest possible terms;

• Workforce demand forecasting allows cutting unnecessary workforce segments or optimizes their labor

• The right planning and employee placement maintain proper and highly effective use of any employee’s resources, based on their skills, knowledge, and abilities.

Factors that should be taken into account for proper workforce planning:

• What is the financial situation like at your company and what is the current general state of the economy?;

• Workforce reorganization (plans on cutting, firing or transferring employees to new positions. It is also necessary to consider retirements and maternity leaves);

• Analyzing and understanding the situation in the employment market and among your competitors is another crucial point;

• The level of salary in the company;

• Perhaps one of the most important factors is having strategic plans and goals for the company.

Knowing at what is the current stage of development of your company has to be one of the factors you should be aware of when forecasting labor demand. In most cases, effective planning can be achieved during periods of active growth and at the time of establishing the enterprise.

Before you tackle workforce demand forecasting, it is also vital to understand that it is a process of consecutive, thought-through actions and decisions that have clear goals in front of it. The main objective of planning lies in the idea that any enterprise or successful company directory has to hire and employ fairly qualified personnel at all positions so that work can be done in a high-quality and effective manner.

Types of workforce demand forecasting:

• Strategic or long-term planning;

• Tactical (situational) planning.

When making strategic plans it is critical to come up with a program aimed at discovering potential employees who can become required by the company in the future. This process also requires creating a strategic human resource development program that simultaneously evaluates the necessity of these resources in the long run.

Tactical planning requires a careful analysis of demand in employee organization during a period laid out by the CEO. For example, it may encompass a month, a quarter or a year. This necessity will depend on a couple of factors: the level of employee turnover in a given period, the number of retirements, maternity leaves as well as staff cuts.

Workforce planning periods

• Short-term planning — planning for up to 2 years;

• Medium-term planning — a strategy for 2 to 5 years;

• Long-term planning — making plans for the next 5 years and beyond that.

So let’s imagine for a moment that you are a new head of the company or an HR expert. What should you start with first in terms of workforce demand forecasting?

First, you must collect information on the results and milestones a company has to achieve in the coming quarter or year. If you are an HR expert get that information from your higher-ups. Then study all short and long-term enterprise goals, tasks and plans.

In most cases, accountants and department directors will help make up your mind about the enterprise you are working at and its plans, whether you work in human resources or run the place.

Things required for successful planning:

• First, you must carefully go through employee data. You will need to get your hands on personal case files, hand out questionnaires, as collect information that concerns worker skills and abilities not related to work done in the enterprise;

• A work timetable or a schedule of all company employees;

• Data on the percent of employee turnover at various positions across departments.

At this stage, a thorough analysis of workforce demand in the company is conducted for various positions for a certain time period. That’s when you answer a big number of questions that are vital for the planning process: how many employees must be hired, how qualified must they be, and what’s more important, when will certain workers be required to fill in particular positions.

During this process, you also make a decision of whether or not you should bring in internal human resources or is requalifying existing employees going to be a more financially reasonable decision.

It doesn’t matter if you are a CEO or an HR professional. Remember that any process has to be consecutive, based on weighted decisions and a systemic approach. As soon as you start taking the job, you have dedicated your whole life to a bit more seriously, you will able to approach any task, even as complicated as workforce planning, with ease, passion, and ardor.

In the previous part of this article, we’ve talked about only a portion of leadership skills any good top manager should have. This part is going to discuss such character traits as a good sense of humor, curiosity, and the ability to negotiate and delegate authority. Let’s begin.

The ability to negotiate

At first, it seems that there is nothing hard in negotiating and holding business talks. People meet, talk, drink coffee, show off, and sign stacks of papers. This is how a typical negotiation is seen by an average jealous employee. A few people know that holding negotiations is one of the main leadership skills. The most important issues are discussed, multi-million dollar deals are signed, and the most important decisions are made during these talks and business meetings. That’s why one must never underestimate the value of proper negotiation skills. By the way, there is an abundance of books on the subject, with yearly and monthly meetings and training sessions held dedicated to this important skill. Don’t hesitate to visit these meetings and read a couple of books on the subject. Then, even the most demanding and hectic negotiation will go as smooth as butter.

Curiosity

Curiosity is another important leadership trait of a professional boss. If you want your company to grow, you have to be curious in the positive sense of the word. We don’t say that you should be interested in the personal lives of your employees, be curious about who is dating who and where someone spent their vacation. We talk about another type of curiosity, inquisitiveness even. It’s important that when you become a director, you don’t lose your spark and curiosity, be invested in learning about new technology in your industry, visit conferences, exchange experience with colleagues and march onward.

The ability to delegate authority

When working on a run-of-the-mill position, you become accustomed to doing all assignments by yourself. If you want to become the head of a company and learn how to manage personnel effectively, you have to learn how to delegate authority. Not only will it save you time but will also allow you to adjust the company workflow as all employees will have something to do, and they will feel appreciated and demanded. Many people fear having to distribute tasks among employees or give important assignments to one of them. Understand that if you do this properly, a department or a business you run will work as a singular mechanism.

The ability to set goals and achieve them

Any experienced director knows that one has to properly formulate assignments and follow them through. If you aimlessly run a business and chaotically make illogical decisions, nothing good will come out of it. A director with great leadership skills has to be balanced, calm and able to clearly formulate their own and company goals. Then employees will view him as a leader and will also strive to achieve the common goal. Objectives have to be understandable, clear and properly formulated. For example, the goal of becoming the best in our industry sounds vague. It is also unclear why people should strive to achieve it. If you set a goal for your employees that sounds something like In the coming year, our income should be double the income of the previous year they are going understand what they have to do and will strive towards the thought after the result. Still, when you set a financial goal before your employees, don’t forget to reward them once it is achieved.

A good sense of humor

A sense of humor is another valuable leadership trait that characterizes a successful boss. However, this trait has one peculiarity – you can’t learn it. You are either born with a good sense of humor or you aren’t. On a more serious note, we would like to point out that finding a company director with a good sense of humor is a rarity. You are very lucky if aside from all the above-mentioned qualities, you are also to make intelligent jokes and get jokes told by other people. We must admit that a sense of humor helps us in the most complicated and seemingly unsolvable situations, which you will inevitably encounter despite the position you are holding.

A positive outlook on life

Living in the modern world makes it hard to maintain a positive outlook on life and the world in general. If you wish to become a truly successful company director, you absolutely must look at things in the most positive way possible. You have to understand that you are the head of a company and your mood, opinion or view on life influences the mood of all of your employees. Each time you come to work, imagine that you are the captain of a huge ship. If you emanate negativity, you will become tense and irritated, your ship will sink or all sailors and chief engineers will run away while you are left alone in the rumbling business sea. If you don’t want this to happen, try looking for happiness in the little things and see the best in the world and your work.

Inspiration skills

We’ve kept the main leadership skill, without which there is no point in agreeing to work at a top position for dessert. If you are uninspired by work you’ve dedicated your daily life too, you won’t be able to inspire employees towards new victories. Any first-class director must know how to inspire people, give them hope, motivate and uncover their potential. This skill can be easily mastered if you are truly in love with your work or are passionate about your business. If you are uninspired yourself, it is hard to foster the opposite feeling in someone else. That’s why we advise finding work you love or the one that irritates you the less and brings a good income.

Should you master all of these skills, the road to apromotion will be an easy one. Strive, learn, dare and always improve yourself!