ACD Manipulation

[Walker]

I have searched for information regarding ACD Abuse or Manipulation without much success. I am interested in what others are experencing in their call centers with CSRs avoiding calls. What kind of tricks have you discovered and how have you addressed it.

Thanks

[NBosch]

There are various ways to cheat on the ACD, but none goes undiscovered when you know how to read the figures.

1. 1 sec. Idle
Most call center have programmed their queue's to look for the call agent who is on available the longest time. By going on Idle for 1 second, you're available time is being recalculated, causing you go get fewer calls.
How can you see if this is being done in your CC: compare av.call times to av.calls handled -> if one or more agents have negative figures compared to their peers, you have a problem.
Sollution 1. Set a target for fair share of calls.
Solution 2. Reprogram the system. Instead of looking at available time, you can have it look at number of calls taken, where the agent with the fewest handled calls, gets the call. Beware! This can cause problems in tech. environments, where call times differ.

2. Log off instead of Idle
This is a trick to improve idle time/workduration (%incoming+%outgoing+%available).
Solution: good control by supervisors.

3. Outgoing call without a customer on the line
When calls are not monitored, this is a trick to get fewer incoming calls. In real bad situations, the agent is actually calling someone (girlfriend, family etc.) but this is not work related.
Solution 1: No more outgoing calls allowed.
Solution 2: Call Monitoring.

I hope to have been of help. Feel free to e-mail me at: niek.bosch@medion.com

Niek

[miguel]

1. the most obvious type is releasing a call. solution: watch AHT and calls. if AHT is way lower than others or if Calls are too many against others, that's a sign. Or you can activate a TRACE in CMS dictionary.

2. Most idle - When agents on AVAIL mode, agents press Aux then auto-in for a split second. that recycles their AVAIL time putting them back to the bottom of the CMS list to transfer calls to. Solution1: Change Avaya EAS setting to Least Occupied Agent from Most Idle Agent.

Solution 2: Activate Agent Trace

[JRoot]

Hi Walker -

I recommend reward and recognition for higher levels of activity. In a perferct work, agents would compete to take the most calls. Try to tie in a tangible result of a call as part of the measurement, i.e. most surverys, sales, saves, support incidents etc. This should make "cheating" a waste of the agent's time. Regular monitoring will catch up to those who call friends, recordings, dead numbers, etc. in an attempt to pad their numbers. I suggest you implement and act on a very strict policy against this. Someone who tries to manipulate phone stats just because they can is showing you the tip of the iceberg as to the numerous ways the'll be a cancer in your room.

Good luck,

Jason

[JLsandiego]

We purchased a tool that just about makes it impossible for CSR's to cheat. The company is called NetLert and their solution is called N-Focus--check them out at www.netlert.com

JL

[KevinC]

Another possibility, which has happened at my call center, is an agent would pick up the call, but their headset would be on mute. Thus the customer would just hang there for a good amount of time, and then eventually hang up. This is a difficult one to see, as they are clocking talk time, and a call taken. The only way to see if this is happeneing, is by doing regular call monitoring on the agents. Hope this will help.

[felix]

Actually, we used to see a lot of these calls before on our call center. (The ones with the agent putting themseleves on mute, and waiting for the customer to hung up).
Since the call is not released is really hard to track and to try to find some sort of abuse pattern due to the fact that they haven't clicked on the release button.
The way we avoid these situations is: we dumped all PBX information on SQL, and then a report was ran for all calls shorter than so seconds and we verify all short calls which aren't released. If we find a few, ok. If we find many, then you have a problem and we talk to the agent.

Another one, that works pretty effectively is to monitor agents randomly. We have Witness, which monitors and records and agent's activity and call within a certain time span, and therefore daily samples from the agent's activity are recorded.

Of course, these methods would not help if action is not taken immediately once abusive behavior is found. The agents are made a final warning. If incident happens again, dismissal might occur.



The weridest and most clever way of phone abuse, was the case of one agent, who, to avoid taking calls, the guy would call the queue. When getting the agent, he would drop the call to move people along on the queue. After a while, the guy would eventually get himself and stay on the call for a long time.

Now, to make sure that his times weren't so odd, the guy would actually would mute some calls to make sure they were shortened, and therefore would even out his AHT to the time that was actually expected of him.



You might be able to find weird and strange things if you just look for them.

[Eric Jorem]

Hello,

I'm Eric and recently (april 2004) I was promoted from call agent to shiftleader with responsibilities that start with monitoring/motivating call agents to dealing with various kinds of escalations. I'm currently working at a call center which consists of approximately 80 agents.

What I'm missing in all of the above solutions, is the approach to keep the agents motivated to a level that they would not "need to" manipulate ACD. I've experienced that when people feel they're appreciated for the job they're doing, not just by raising salaries but by showing to them that you noticed that they managed to get good results, the motivation to "keep up the good work" increases gradually.

[felix]

Inevitably, you need to make sure that your agents are motivated when achieving the desired results.
Congratulate the guys with the best results, and make sure everyone notices. This has to be clear as water, to ensure that you have a motivated team.

But this also means that you must react to unwanted behaviors on the floor. The fact that you find that someone is engaged on call avoidance or other activity like it, does not necessarily mean you have a bad agent, but it is up to you to set up the limits.
If you take no action or little action, the rest of the floor who are doing their job as they are supposed to, will assume that there are no consequences for these kind of behaviors, therefore you will be enabling more of these situations.
As well, your guys with the right attitude, will become demotivated, when finding that actually doing things the right way, has little or no benefits at all.

[Samuel]

Call avoidance is the term I use. Depending on the phone system you are using there are several ways to avoid calls.

most of which have been mentioned already.

Keep an eye on your reports and hold your managers accountable for short calls and out going calls.

a trick I encountered a while back was puting a client on hold and then hanging out in the vru for a different department.

The key to limiting Call avoidance is a good workforce manager that is constantly looking at all agent activities together with a well put together quality team conducting LIVE call monitors.

You management staff should also be employing MBWA (managing by walking around). This constant management presence on the floor will make things difficult for would be avoiders.

[cjw17]

What do you do about ACD manipulation? One reply indicated final warning, but what does everyone else do? We have terminated people on the spot for doing this, but what do you do about the employee who has 20 years with your company & has never gotten caught doing this before? Does anyone else terminate for one documented instance of this? What about disconnecting a call while talking to a customer?

[Samuel]

The key in any call center environment when it comes to corrective action on any item is consistency. Consistent measures must be taken on any item regardless of the agents tenure. If a 20 year employee has excessive absenteeism they must suffer the consequences. You kind of become a victim of your own policies in this regard when dealing with long term agents.

To stray from this will effect the entire moral of your center, not to mention open you and your company up to liability when you dismiss a different agent for the same thing you gave latitude to a experienced agent.

HR can sure make you life difficult.

Personally I make the policy tough enough to make a point but not so tough that I immedietly lose a really good agent who had a bad day.

I think call avoidance (ACD manipulation) shoud be a straight to final offense. In 12 years I have only had 2 agents repeat the act after a nice firm talking to on final warning for this act.

[Eric Jorem]

Originally posted by Samuel
You management staff should also be employing MBWA (managing by walking around). This constant management presence on the floor will make things difficult for would be avoiders.

I like this approach a lot. I practice it myself (workpressure permitting of course) and I think it's getting results.