Call Centers under Stress, Shai Berger, CEO Fonolo TADSummit EMEA Americas 2020 The Covid era has placed stress on call centers like never before. It would be hard to design a better scenario to push call centers to the breaking point. At the same time that call volumes started surging, many call centers were forced to work with fewer agents. In other words: a demand shock and a supply shock at the same time. Many call centers failed catastrophically, and we will look at some case studies. More importantly, we will look at how, exactly, call centers fail under load. This is a vastly under-studied topic, and one that is newly relevant. We can’t just look back at mid 2020 and just do a “post mortem”; The increased volume and the decreased staff are stressors that are still in play today! As an industry, we need to make disaster-planning and operating-under-stress an integral part of call center design.

1. Shai Berger
@shaiberger
TADSummit 2020

5. For many contact centers the only backstop is a busy signal.

8. Prime Minister
announces lock-down
and new program of
unemployment benefits.
Callers rush to begin
the claim process.
March 23, 2020

9. • 2000 agents
• 2 data centers
• Genesys on top of
Cisco UCM (all IP)

11. Plot twists…
• License bursting
• Voice navigation
• Biometrics
• Policy changes
More at www.fonolo.com

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