It’s a never-ending struggle heightened by the bad economy: How do contact center managers increase agent productivity while ensuring that those agents work at optimal levels for the customer? Addison Lee created its efficiency gains by staffing its contact center to match spikes in call volume. According to Chris De Souza, call centre operations manager at the London-based minicab service, call volume is influenced by factors like weather, local events, and times of the year. For example, last winter on a single snowy day, call volume spiked from the typical 10,000 calls in one day to 42,000—and adding agents in a timely manner was practically impossible.