Of course we all heard the shrinkage joke in our Call Centres… even with the pooling theory!
The shrinkage is an important value to consider in your Call Centre. The shrinkage is the percentage of time your agents will not be on the phone answering your customers. There is planned shrinkage (scheduled breaks, training, scheduled vacations, etc.) and unplanned shrinkage (agent missing in action, etc.)
We could argue on the fact that the shrinkage could always be planned. I tend to agree. Absenteeism is a good example. We can’t be sure on how many agents will be calling in sick next Friday, but we know there will be a few of them. How can we plan and forecast it? The same way we do for call volume and AHT, we analyze the historical data on absenteeism. We do the same exercise for system issues, and any other elements that could keep agents from handling customer calls.