The ultimate case of buyer's remorse....

[Sacknahalf05]

We have a scheduling program as well in our call center (with 900+ people, being open 24 hours a day, it's no wonder why). We also have 3 reasonably intelligent schedulers whose job it is to take all factors into account (are we having free shipping this weekend? Is it a holiday weekend? Will a lot of people be at home watching tv? Who will be hosting the shows?) and plug this all into our scheduler, which will then tell the guys how many people we should have on staff for every hour of the day.

Sounds decently simple, right? Wrong-o.

Apparently customers are very fickle (who knew?), and days don't always go like the scheduler assumes. We may have 150 people on the phone one show, getting our butts kicked with 200+ calls in queue, or we may have 180 people on the phone, sitting at 10% utilized. Meanwhile, you're sitting there taking a call every 20-30 minutes, pissed as hell cause you put in for a Paid Day off for that day for a doctor's appointment or YOUR FATHER'S WEDDING (yes, it happened!), but since sales were "supposed" to be high that day, all days off were denied.

The holidays are the worst. It is impossible to get a day off between November first and January 15th without having to trade a day with someone. I mean, the world does not stop just because we "might" get busy at work.

OMG, sorry for the rant. Didn't realize I'd have so much to say about that lol.

[MadonnaC]

This type of thing is my job now....

Apparently customers are very fickle (who knew?), and days don't always go like the scheduler assumes. We may have 150 people on the phone one show, getting our butts kicked with 200+ calls in queue, or we may have 180 people on the phone, sitting at 10% utilized. Meanwhile, you're sitting there taking a call every 20-30 minutes, pissed as hell cause you put in for a Paid Day off for that day for a doctor's appointment or YOUR FATHER'S WEDDING (yes, it happened!), but since sales were "supposed" to be high that day, all days off were denied.

unfortunately sometimes things happen that way. Just because it's not busy, or it is busier than normal, doesn't mean we can change things at the drop of a hat. Also, it may be managers that say there are X people allowed off per day - even if we know it's going to be quiet

As to getting Christmas time off, we have so many people who decide to keep a few days 'just in case' that we had waiting lists because if they do not use the vacation, then they lose it, so hundreds were asking for space. Now we have the situation that they want to make sure they get the time next year, so we are back to waiting lists

As to doing shifts, I have no idea how they managed to set up their system. We define the minimum and maximum length of shift, and how much change the system is allowed to make each day, and how far apart the breaks are supposed to be. Sounds like someone couldn't be bothered to set up their software that they just spent thousands (or even more) on.