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Agent Scheduler
Frequently Asked Questions
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What is Call Center Designer?
Call Center Designer is a tool for call center managers to determine the most efficient staffing for
each period of time throughout the workday. In the Day Planner module, the user enters the start and
end of the work day, the desired service level, call volumes with average talk and wrap-up time for
each time period throughout the day. The optimum agent and inbound line levels are then calculated
along with performance predictions on queue times and agent performance.
In the Staffing module plots number of agents against such performance values as average speed
to answer, queue length, agent occupancy and other predicted values. The critical break-off points
were service levels become unacceptable can be established for the busy hour, least busy hour or
average hour of the workday.
What is SimACD?
SimACD is an add-on module to Call Center Designer. It provides the ability to test and try out
different “what if” situations before actually implementing them in the call center. Enter or download
expected call volumes with the number of agents and trunks you plan on using for each time period
in the workday, along with the abandon and re-try behavior of your callers, and the ring delay and
overflow characteristics of your ACD. SimACD then simulates the call arrivals and displays how
many calls were queued, overflowed, blocked, received a busy, and how quickly they were answered.
The simulation algorithm corrects the well known defects of Erlang-C type formulas and can be
used to refine the output of Call Center Designer by accurately taking into account caller
abandonment, re-try, overflow, and correct probability distributions of talk and queue times.
What is AgentTime?
AgentTime is the affordable new agent scheduling solution is designed specifically for small and
medium sized call centers. AgentTime creates agent employee schedules from a database of
agents, shift definitions, agent availability, agent preferences and agent priorities entered by the call
center manager. It uses the agent level requirements from each time period in a call center’s
workweek determined by Call Center Designer and SimACD staffing software. It includes, and is
tightly integrated with these products.
What is the basic difference between Call Center Designer and SimACD?
Call Center Designer tells you the number of agents needed to reach a desired service level,
whereas you tell SimACD the number of agents you want to use and you then see what service
levels result. Call Center Designer uses statistical methods (Erlang formulas) to calculate optimum
staffing levels and call center performance data based on call volumes and services levels that you
enter. SimACD uses random number generation techniques to simulate the minute to minute
operation of an ACD and presents what will happen with various agent and inbound line
combinations. Call Center Designer is used to obtain baseline agent levels, then if needed,
SimACD is used to refine these values by accurately taking into account caller abandonment and
retrial behavior, ACD overflow, ring delay, and a more accurate modeling of call lengths and queue
duration. Both products do financial calculations based on expense and revenue data entered. You
will see the profit per call, inbound line and agent costs, etc. You can also determine what agent
levels are best for profit as opposed to the service level you provide to callers.
What kinds of call centers use Call Center Designer and SimACD?
Small and medium sized call centers that have between 10 and 75 or so agents. Usually these call
centers cannot afford the "full-blown" workforce management systems that sell for $25,000.00 to
$200,000.00. They use our products for staffing analysis and scheduling to accurately seat the right
number of agents at the right times. Inaccurate staffing is actually more harmful in the smaller the
call center as the addition or subtraction of just one or two agents can have dramatic effects on call
center productivity. (See our white paper: A Primer on Call Center Staffing).
Many large call centers also use our products for in-depth staffing analysis to supplement their
workforce management and scheduling systems. Rather than just accepting the static calculations
these systems tell them, they use Call Center Designer and SimACD to "play with the numbers" and
do "what-if" analysis to show them how to improve their operations and what the effects of different
call patterns and agent arrangements will have on customer service and call center costs.
Our AgentTime scheduler is more flexible than the competition as well. It allows users to change the
calculated schedules on the fly to reflect their personal knowledge and situations that cannot be
programmed into a scheduling algorithm. It doesn't force the user to accept schedules that they
might deem unreasonable.
What is your update policy?
Whenever a new version of our products is released, we notify our installed customers and provide a
free update via email or disk if there has been no price change. If a new version entails an increase
in the price of our products, current users will get a significant price break.
What kind of technical support do you provide?
Free telephone support is given 8:00am to 5:00pm PST Monday through Friday. Sometimes you may
need to leave a message, but you will always get a call back the same day. We can also schedule
free over-the-phone training sessions using our demo data files, or with your own call volume and
scheduling data.
Click here for a Overview of the Product - Power Point Presentation
For more information or a demo, email sales@callcenterstore.com
or call 1-866.580.5577 ask for Linda Hogan
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