Facilities & Design | Call Centers

The furnished environment your agents have to work in for four to eight hours a day affects their attitude more than whether the technology they are using shaves a few seconds off call duration. Their comfort, or discomfort, within that environment has an undeniable effect on the way they deal with customers. And of course, on turnover, which affects long term hiring and training costs.

But there’s more to call center design than picking out pretty colors and sleek workstations. The right call center furnishings can help the work get done faster and better. Employees are happier, they are out sick less, they sell more and serve your customers better. Here are some of the important factors that go into a successful design.

One thing I’m not going to get into here will be networking and cabling. This is a thorny issue, and one that changes as frequently as any other technology outlined in this book. Suffice it to say, make sure of these three things:

1. You choose workstation units that allow easy access to cabling and phone wires.

2. Your architect and design team are fully aware of the kind of voice and data networking that you want to install, and that they are sensitive to the peculiar needs of expensive telecom and computer equipment. (In other words, don’t put the ACD in a room next to the HVAC system or the cafeteria).

3. Whatever your wiring plant, make sure it’s upgradable without having to rip apart floors, walls and ceilings to do it.

It’s also been argued by some architects and designers that the physical layout of the call center can have a direct effect on a company’s profitability.

One study done in 1990 of 70 million square feet of office space found that the cost to build and maintain office facilities is only 15% of the total, with the remaining 85% going to salaries. The argument would then go that, if you focus the design so as to have as beneficial an effect as possible on the workforce that comprises that 85% outlay, you can make the business case to spend more up front on layout and design with the expectation of back-end savings. Substantial research has been completed that demonstrates the effect design can have on increased productivity of building occupants.

Times have changed. In the past you could say the chairs, the lighting and the design of the workstation were the most important elements of call center design. Those things are still important, but issues of health and safety are increasingly on people’s minds these days. Yes — even in call centers.

One architectural firm I spoke to ballparked the cost of fitting out office space for call center use as ranging from $22 to $38 per square foot. Assuming the average cost of $30 per square foot is borrowed at 9.5% for 10 years, an increase in the staff productivity of 15% will pay the debt service for the entire construction cost necessary to improve the space for call center use, they say.