Adherence Definition / determination / calculation?

[Trevor]

Hello All,

I am wondering how folks are defining / determining / calculating attendance in their centers / for their program.

For example, if you take one agent, their schedule is made up of specific mintues (is this the icrement you would use?) of the day during which the agent is expected to be in a certain state (work, idle, etc.) Adherence would then be the percent of mintues during which the agent was in the correct state. Your goal would not be 100% as long calls and such would easily make you out of adherence.

Thats a specific example, please don't let it limit your reply if you use a completely different system.

Thanks!
Trevor

[mikael]

Trevor,

<<" For example, if you take one agent, their schedule is made up of specific mintues (is this the icrement you would use?) of the day during which the agent is expected to be in a certain state (work, idle, etc.) Adherence would then be the percent of mintues during which the agent was in the correct state. Your goal would not be 100% as long calls and such would easily make you out of adherence. ">>

That depends upon the goal, doesn't it?
If you tell your reps that they are to always be in one of the following states: on a call, available for a call, offline working a case, on authorized break, etc -- then the total time spent in all of these activitiies should add up to 100% of the time that they are on duty.

If you add adherence to a specific AHT, as you normally would for first level queue, then the rep should comply with that AHT -or- have their supervisor temporarily replace them with another rep so that they can continue working a long call if that is what is appropriate to be done for the customer.

Adherence is a problem typically when reps have not been trained in the effects of unauthorized unavailability on the center and on their team mates. I use the example of playing tug-of-war -- if one or more of your pullers stops working, the whole team is headed quickly for the mud-bath! It's in the interests of the whole team that reps be on-line & available when they are scheduled to be so, and it's the job of the manager and supervisors to make sure that every member of the team is indeed playing as a team.

For the individual rep, it's a question of professionalism. You are, or you're not. If you abandon your team-mates and don't pull your weight, then you can't consider yourself properly a member of the team. If you as a manager have non-professional people working for you, then you need to be actively planning to correct that situation as soon as possible lest your boss be looking askance at you!

[Trevor]

Thanks for the response Mikael....

I guess I should have said that I am specifically interested in schedule adherence. I am a part of our WFM group and we are interested in if anyone if following the plans we are creating.

We already track what I would call basic adherence in the form of sign-in time and sign-out time compared to the schedule but we do not track anything in-between (breaks, meetings etc) does anyone else do that? We would like to know with one number if possible how closely the schedule was followed. I understand and agree with the education part, but I still think it needs to be tracked. And we're not even sure if it is a problem that needs educating on...

We already track/report/have goals on Ready to Serve (=(total sign-on time - idle time)/total sign-on time) but that doesn't if the rep completely disregarded their schedule and worked in the morning vs. the evening. (Don't want to get into a discussion about their supervisor/managers here :)

I like the tug-o-war analogy... =)

Trevor

[mikael]

Trevor,

Thanks for starting an excellent discussion topic, by the way.

<<"We already track what I would call basic adherence in the form of sign-in time and sign-out time compared to the schedule but we do not track anything in-between (breaks, meetings etc) does anyone else do that? We would like to know with one number if possible how closely the schedule was followed.">>

Hmmm, that's going to be tricky. You'd need to compare your ACD records against your schedule pretty tightly so that you only looked at the totals of Available and Engaged (on a call) within the exact schedule parameters, excluding any data that was not between those specified hours for that specific individual -- and make sure that your people consistently logged off the phone whenever they were not scheduled to be on line. Even then, you wouldn't catch compliance with the target AHT with that one number you want -- and therefore the usefulness of that 1-number for ensuring compliance with the overall service level target wouldn't be there.

And yes, centers should closely track the amount of time reps spend in meetings, training, etc -- you absolutely need that data in order to do any real cost accounting or analysis.

<<"And we're not even sure if it is a problem that needs educating on...">>

I've almost never found a center where education on the effects of unauthorized absence or non-compliance with the AHT target at 1st level was NOT seriously needed...

<<"We already track/report/have goals on Ready to Serve (=(total sign-on time - idle time)/total sign-on time) but that doesn't if the rep completely disregarded their schedule and worked in the morning vs. the evening. ">>

Yes, as I noted above, you wouldn't get good data on this unless you could filter the ACD report to exclude any data from times outside the individual's scheduled shift.

<<"(Don't want to get into a discussion about their supervisor/managers here :)">>

Oh, so *I* get to deal with that one when I come through to do an assessment, huh? Well, since I go away at the end of the project, I can safely talk about the "politically sub-optimal" subjects...

You really do have to rely on the supervisors and the team leads to enforce the adherence issues, but they can only be effective on that when the reps thoroughly understand the basic issues and can see why it's in their own interests to support the program. Otherwise, all you're doing is cracking the whip.

Have you taken a look at your center's compliance with its service level target to see where and how often you're out of whack? If you're consistently meeting the target, and the customers are happy, the only other question would be if you could do it with less -- and for that, adherence would again come into play.

Isn't performance analysis fun? It's like tracing the workings of a clock -- an offsize gear at one point can throw the whole timepiece off -- unless, of course, the problem is covered and compensated for at some other point.

[Trevor]

Thanks for discussing this with me :)

"Hmmm, that's going to be tricky. You'd need to compare your ACD records against your schedule pretty tightly so that you only looked at the totals of Available and Engaged (on a call) within the exact schedule parameters, excluding any data that was not between those specified hours for that specific individual -- and make sure that your people consistently logged off the phone whenever they were not scheduled to be on line. Even then, you wouldn't catch compliance with the target AHT with that one number you want -- and therefore the usefulness of that 1-number for ensuring compliance with the overall service level target wouldn't be there. "

You're right on target with what I am thinking about in terms of schedule adherence... Comparing ACD data to schedule data on a pretty fine level. As for having to log off/on when they are supposed to be.. we pay from the ACD so they are pretty in tune with that :)

You keep mentioning AHT.... We've recently had some discussions about metrics/reporting etc. and we think of the metrics that are important to us as falling into 2 buckets... Quality and Adherence. Quality contains AHT (the agent efficiently handled the call) accuracy, soft skills etc. Adherence is schedule adherence, attendance, and RTS. We currently measure/track RTS and attendance and are starting to get into adherence as it is more intraday than attendance...

What I'm getting from your comments is that you haven't seen this type of tracking / data collection /comparision in action (please correct me if i'm wrong) We've had experience with TCS and its Real-Time Adherence module... (seems most WFM systems have something similar) but we haven't seen an Adherence Report with that one number for adherence...


(notice the missing 'education' and 'supervisor' ;)

Trevor

[mikael]

Trevor,

<<"As for having to log off/on when they are supposed to be.. we pay from the ACD so they are pretty in tune with that :)">>

Oooh, there's an interesting line! Now you've got me curious as to what kind of an operation you're running.

<<"...we think of the metrics that are important to us as falling into 2 buckets... Quality and Adherence. Quality contains AHT (the agent efficiently handled the call) accuracy, soft skills etc. Adherence is schedule adherence, attendance, and RTS. We currently measure/track RTS and attendance and are starting to get into adherence as it is more intraday than attendance...">>

Well, I'm a strong advocate of managing a center by compliance with service level, FCRR/escalation rates, customer retention, profitablity and support/service prevention. I recommend a dashboard of metrics that give you a reading to support the above, and if you can't make a clear connection between a metric and one of the above, then I question whether the metric is really of any use. (It's like PC performance benchmarking -- you can collect all sorts of arcane numbers that in reality have no meaning at all -- but if it's numbers you want, well, by golly, PC Mag will give you all the numbers you could ever want! )


<<"What I'm getting from your comments is that you haven't seen this type of tracking / data collection /comparision ... ">>

Correct. Probably because I'm professionally suspicious of one-number metrics. I wrote an article for Customer Support Mgmt Mag a couple of years ago about how you get what you measure -- so be careful what you ask for!

<<"(notice the missing 'education' and 'supervisor' ;)">>

When you're ready for the "lightning rod" to come in and say the things that need to be said in the ears that *desperately* need to hear them (that you cannot say and keep your job/skin), give me a call. It wouldn't be the first time I've faced a CEO/Senior Mgmt team/Board and delivered my "contact center basic Reality 101" lecture. They'll take it from me, and learn from it -- because I go away at the end of the project...

[Trevor]

Hi Mikael,

I work for an outsourcer that focuses on Tech support and CS for technology companies..... Instead of our agents 'punching' a time clock when they get to work, we get that info from our ACD.

You mention First Call Resolution... to me that is something that falls into the Quality bucket as it's so close to accuracy.

I don't think of this as The 'one number metric' this would be one of many (maybe too many... but that's a different story :) It would be used along with all the quality scores, AHT, RTS...

I'd be interested to read your article... Is it online somewhere?

"<<"What I'm getting from your comments is that you haven't seen this type of tracking / data collection /comparision ... ">>

<>"

So in your experience, how are folks tracking how well their reps are following the schedule? Just shrinkage/attendance?

I don't think that our mgmt needs that talk yet... they are pretty open to new ideas and are focused on the rep. as the most important position in the company and the supervisor as the second. This whole adherence thing started from a discussion with our director with the whole idea being to provide the supervisors with the information they need to run their part of the business (that what my group focuses on).

Trevor

[mikael]

Trevor,

<<"I'd be interested to read your article... Is it online somewhere? ">>

It used to be on the Customer SUpport Mgmt Magazine website, but they've gone under and the site apparently was taken down. I haven't added that particular article to my Resources page at www.mblaisdell.com yet, but I will at some point. (It may be awhile, I've got more than 10 years worth of columns & articles to sort through & reformat, etc. in the midst of running a consulting practice and trying to have a life as well. )

<<"You mention First Call Resolution... to me that is something that falls into the Quality bucket as it's so close to accuracy. ">>

I put the customer satisfaction stuff into the Quality bucket, and FCRR into the operational since it properly varies with the call category. Courtesy, empathy, etc. are (or should be) constants.

<<"So in your experience, how are folks tracking how well their reps are following the schedule? Just shrinkage/attendance?">>

Mostly, it's done as a supervisor activity. I suppose that one could get fancy with an Excel spreadsheet and a data-dump from an ACD, but I haven't seen anybody go that route personally. It may be that some of the forecaster/schedulers have that functionality built into them, that would be an obvious bell/whistle for them to add.