[joshspankit]

Based on experience I’d say that focusing on the wrong staff-metrics is worse than under-staffing.

For example marking employees by how quickly they “process” someone (aka Handle Time) actually incentivizes employees to not listen, to tell people the wrong information, and to push them to be somebody else’s problem. The customer who might have taken 10min now takes 5 here, 10 there, 20 over there, 20 min of a supervisor’s time, and countless minutes taking up space in the various lines waiting to be told something else.

If a system runs like that it almost doesn’t matter how much staff they have because all those staff feel overworked and overskilled.