Overview
Your schedule says you're fully staffed. Your floor doesn't always agree. Every contact center loses hours to breaks, training, absenteeism, and no-shows, and left untracked, that gap shows up as missed service levels, even on teams with zero turnover. Most outsourcing conversations only track attrition, who's leaving, without ever asking who's actually working the hours they're scheduled for. This one-pager breaks down that gap, called shrinkage, walks through the formula behind it, and shows the three mechanisms Connext uses to keep clients closer to the floor than the industry average.
Key Highlights
- Two Different Metrics. Attrition tracks who leaves the company; shrinkage tracks who isn't on the floor during scheduled hours, even when nobody left.
- The Formula, Defined. Shrinkage % equals unproductive hours divided by scheduled hours, times 100, split into planned causes like breaks and training and unplanned ones like absenteeism and downtime.
- The Industry Runs Hot. BPO and call center shrinkage typically lands between 30% and 35% globally, meaning a team scheduled for 100 seats often needs closer to 143 people to keep 100 actually working.
- Three Levers, Not One. Redundant backup coverage, daily and weekly WFM tracking, and a dedicated Ops Manager at up to a 50:1 ratio are the mechanisms Connext uses to close the gap.
Wondering how much of your scheduled capacity actually makes it to the floor? Download the guide to find out.
Get the Free One-Pager now!
Fill out the form and we'll send the full one-pager straight to your inbox — ready to read offline or share with your team.
The Challenge
A company-wide hiring freeze left the client’s project teams without enough in-house estimators to keep pace with a growing pipeline of construction and engineering bids. In an industry where precise cost estimating is the foundation of effective project budgeting and resource allocation, every delayed estimate risked a missed submission deadline — and a lost contract.
The Approach
More One Pagers
Brand voice governance for outsourced hospitality teams
See the four-part brand voice governance model for outsourced hospitality teams — voice profile, QA scorecard, escalation triggers, and calibration.
Find out more
Why teams fail with outsourcing and what co-management does differently
See the 7 most common outsourcing failures, why they happen, and how co-management prevents each one. Side-by-side model comparison inside. Free download.
Find out more
Deal research desk RACI: who does what between your deal team and an offshore analyst
AI can surface hundreds of acquisition targets in minutes; verifying them is where deal teams lose the week. This one-pager gives private equity, corporate development, and investment banking leaders a working RACI for a deal research desk: who owns sourcing, qualification, verification, approvals, and the final investment decision when a dedicated offshore analyst joins the workflow. Includes research workflows, quality checkpoints for AI-generated targets and financial data, and a weekly operating cadence that keeps decision-ready outputs moving without ceding control.
Find out more
