Call-Center Labor Cross-Training: It's a Small World After All

For many companies, call centers have become a primary way of communicating with their customers. Most organizations with customer contact -private companies, as well as government and emergency serviceshave reengineered their infrastructure to include call centers, either internally managed or outsourced. The call centers thus form an important and a vast service industry, employing roughly 3-4 million Americans according to Data Monitor. For both the privately held businesses and the emergency services, improving customer service levels for call centers is critical. Careful attention to the management of the workforce can help call centers to avoid lost calls and reduce long waiting lines. One effective workforce management technique to create flexibility and improve service performance is labor "cross-training," achieved by training the workforce for multiple tasks.