What call data do you need before changing the roster?
Start with four to six ordinary weeks, leaving out public holiday weeks unless you are planning for them. Ask your phone provider for an interval report: calls offered, answered and abandoned in each half hour, with average wait and average talk time. If you use a hosted business phone system, check its reports first. The 3CX manual, as one example, describes queue settings such as a maximum wait time, a service level time used for reporting and a wrap-up time for agents. If you only have a basic line, keep a tally sheet at the desk for two weeks: one mark per call per half hour, noted as answered, missed or returned.
- Calls offered, answered and abandoned in each half hour
- Average wait before answer and before hang-up
- Average talk time, plus any recorded wrap-up time
- Callbacks requested and callbacks that failed
- Outbound calls made by reception in the same intervals
How do you turn calls into staff hours?
Workload in an interval is the number of calls multiplied by the average handling time, where handling time includes the booking, notes and messages that follow each call. Hypothetical example: 30 calls between 9:00 and 9:30 at four minutes each is 120 minutes of work in a 30-minute window, which needs four people doing nothing but phones. Calls do not arrive evenly, so staff cannot be fully occupied without callers queueing. Contact centres use queueing formulas such as Erlang C to estimate the staff needed for a target wait. A simple spreadsheet can apply the same idea: plan for spare capacity in every interval.
Which front-desk work competes with the phone?
The person who answers the phone usually also checks patients in, takes payments, processes claims, scans referrals and handles script requests. Count that work too. For one week, tally counter transactions per half hour alongside calls, and look for intervals where arrivals, payments and calls stack up at once. Once you can see both workloads together, you can decide whether to split roles at peak times, so one person owns the phone while another owns the counter, or move tasks that can wait into quieter intervals.
- Patient arrivals and check-ins
- Payments, claims and receipts
- Incoming referrals, faxes and emails
- Script and form requests
- Outbound recall and reminder calls
Where do abandoned calls tell you to add cover?
Abandoned calls show where callers gave up, which is a better guide to unmet demand than total call volume. Plot abandoned calls by half hour and day of week, and look at how long callers waited before hanging up. Very short hang-ups may be misdials, so decide on a cut-off, such as calls dropped within a few seconds, and apply it every time. If your system offers queue callbacks, count failed callbacks as unanswered demand; 3CX, for example, treats a callback the caller does not answer as a failed callback. A cluster in the same interval week after week points to a rostering gap, while scattered abandons suggest a process problem.
Should you hire, reshuffle or add overflow cover?
Match the fix to the shape of the gap. Short, predictable peaks can often be covered by staggering start times, moving breaks or shifting outbound recall calls out of the busiest hour. A long daily shortfall usually needs more paid hours. Short, irregular peaks, such as Monday mornings or winter illness season, are where overflow to an answering service or AI receptionist may cost less than rostering a person for a whole shift; compare quotes against your own call data. Any change to an employee's regular roster has to be discussed with them first, and breaks come from the award or registered agreement that covers your staff.
How do you check that the new roster worked?
Run the same interval report four weeks after the change and compare it with your baseline, interval by interval. Watch abandoned calls, average wait and failed callbacks in the intervals you targeted, plus counter queues reported by staff. Check that the problem has not simply moved: a later start for one person can open a gap at closing time. Ask reception staff what changed for them, since they see demand that never shows in reports, such as patients who walk in because they could not get through. Repeat the review after major changes such as a new practitioner or online booking.