While economic news continues to improve, many companies are still leary of jumping back into large commitments for growth. Many companies indicate that their call volumes and product revenue is up, but staffing budgets are still frozen to 2009 levels or less. As a result, call center managers are consistently pulled between needs to train agents on new products, but balance the same staff counts with heavier workloads.

The answer to the demand driven question of “How do we increase agent productivity” can be found in Workforce Management Principles – specifically Agent Schedule Adherence or Conformance Programs.

Solution

While the term workforce management is familiar to many people, there are specific terms in the WFM that require definition:

Schedule Conformance – Percentage of on-line time an agent actually provides that he or she was scheduled to provide
Schedule Adherence – Percentage of time agents performed the activity listed on the schedule at the time the activity was scheduled
Shrinkage – Percentage of time agents are not available to take calls –Positive and Negative Shrinkage
- Positive – Training, Coaching, Meetings, Planned Breaks and Lunches
- Negative – Unplanned Breaks, Lunches, Excessive AHT
Schedule Exceptions - Approved/Unapproved Exceptions to Agent Schedules

While Schedule Conformance can provide many of the same benefits as Schedule Adherence, your schedules and agent utilization is not fully optimized unless you are measuring and monitoring Schedule Adherence.

For example, a small, simple 35 seat call center that is staffed from 7 am to 6 pm with a call volume and handle time that meets forecast can have exceed the planned hours for workforce availability that day - and still miss the Service Level objective. Why? In this example, you planned for 31.53 Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) for that day, needed 30.94 FTEs, and actually had 31.00 FTEs working.

But - your agents were not in the right place at the right time, and thus you lost the opportunity to maximize your opportunity for training and coaching time - which is critical to allow for the increased demand to educate your agents on new marketing efforts as your organization works to rebound from the 2009 economic crisis.

Steps for a successful agent adherence program include:

Planning
- Baseline your metrics and determine your planned vs. unplanned shrinkage, your call volumes, and determine your average agent state metrics for call and non-call activities.
- Determine your acceptance agent state threshold through use of your baseline - but keep your thresholds realistic. For example, allow enough of a window of overages for your agents to take a call right before a scheduled activity (such as lunch) so that the agent can finish the call before leaving for lunch without penalty.
- Forecast your new shrinkage levels and determine how much savings you can achieve.
- Get support from your executive management, human resources, and union (if applicable) before you move forward to ensure that your support team understands the program and supports it.
- Determine ownership of adherence. Who will monitor the agent states? Who is responsible for alerting the agents when they are out of adherence? Who will coach the agents and hold them accountable?
Implementation
- Prepare your Rollout. Implement your thresholds into your WFM/ACD solution, develop an exception management program (track of approved, non-approved adherence exceptions), train everyone, and then implement your monitoring and notification process.
- Monitor your results and adjust your thresholds as needed. Make sure that you notify your agents of out of adherence issues when they happen. Ensure that your owners are managing per the ownership plan, and communicate your results to executive management, your call center management team, and your agents.
- Incorporate Adherence into your balanced agent and supervisor scorecard to ensure accountability.
Ongoing Management
- Incorporate adherence into your new hire and refresher training, staff meetings, and team building events. There are some great and fun games for showing agents the importance of adherence - use them!
- Hold your supervisors and WFM team accountable. Teach your supervisors how to coach with metrics and make sure they do it. Both teams should be accountable for success - not just your WFM team
- Measure and Understand your Metrics - incorporate your adherence metrics into your intraday, daily, weekly, and monthly reporting cycle.

Conclusion

While the implementation of an agent adherence program can be challenging, the results are well worth the effort. It is key to remember that agents and supervisors may have difficulty with this concept, so communicate, communicate, and then communicate again. Accountability is a key factor. Change is difficult, and if there is not motivation to succeed through accountability, your agents and supervisors may not support your program and it will fail.

If you take it slowly and carefully, your call center can soon be a optimized organization with relaxed and productive agents that can handle customer interactions within your service level targets, keep your costs on target, but still offer enrichment through training and coaching times.

Comment on this Focus Brief

Todd Hodgen

Posted on Aug. 25, 2010

These discussions on workforce management and adherence to schedules reminds me of the 1980's and large team concepts with union labor in call centers. I thought that perhaps the industry had moved beyond printing out adherence reports and trying to manage a workforce with brute force, and found incentives to have team members work for the good of their salary and the goals of the company. Guess political correctness, and building a diverse workforce with common goals still isn't happening. What a shame to have to work from adherence reports to shape the outcome of your call center.

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Michelle Babb

Practice Director, WFO and Analytics, Ponvia

Posted on Aug. 30, 2010

Hi Todd,

Thanks for your feedback and providing an alternate viewpoint.

As you point out, agents should not be considered successful if they ONLY met their adherence goals. Adherence is just one component of the performance of an agent. It is, however, an important metric and should be considered in the appropriate weight for your call center (call centers with new programs should have a lower weight, while call centers mature in the process should have a higher weight) and does not devalue the importance of metrics like call quality and customer satisfaction.

It is, though, one of the few items that agents have direct control to manage. Agents cannot determine how many customer interactions per hour are delivered – that is decided by your workload distribution tool (ACD, Email Management Tool, etc.). Agents do have control over their quality, handle time (to a certain extent), and adherence. Your exception policy should discount adherence items that are outside of the control of the agent and should not be counted against the agent (like receiving a phone call right before the agent goes to break, being late occasionally because of an unusual event, returning late from a meeting that was run by the CEO, etc.). Now I’m not advocating that people who are late every day because of “traffic” should not be held accountable, but rather that you should hold your agents accountable to perform within areas within their control – not outside it.

I have had many critics of adherence management say “well, you should trust your agents to follow their schedule.” I completely agree! You should trust your agents to follow the schedule, but stuff happens.

My peers, boss, and clients trust me to honor my meeting and appointment times just as I trust them. But when I occasionally run late, I expect that I will get a call or a text message from a meeting participant to say “Hey, where are you?” I don’t consider these reminders as brute force, but rather as a friendly reminder from people who are aware that something has not gone accordingly to plan…and they need to know if the event should be rescheduled, start without me, etc. And I miss the meeting by more than 10 minutes often, you can bet my boss would call me and coach me about it.

Workforce Management and Adherence Management principles apply to more than just the call center environment but we rarely think of it in those terms. I challenge you in your next meeting to identify how many people are late and for how many minutes. If you assume each person makes $10 an hour and the meeting cannot start until everyone is in place, how much money is your company losing due to poor meeting adherence practices? And how aggravating is to the meeting participants that do show up on time to see the same person is late every time with no accountability?

When you take the same principle and apply to the call center where every minute counts, the costs and impacts can be staggering…and more importantly, it could be robbing your team of time that could be spent in something productive and fun – like a team building event that celebrates your diversity.

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