Schedule adherence and conformance management is tantamount to forecast and schedule accuracy, in that it is a set of metrics that measures the quality of actual work versus a pre-determined plan, i.e. schedules developed to cover forecast requirements.
Simply put, even with accurate forecasts and effective schedules, if your Agents' adherence and conformance results are below an acceptable threshold, you're going to miss your service targets, and send customers packing for another less-frustrating service option...namely, a competitor.
Simply put, even with accurate forecasts and effective schedules, if your Agents' adherence and conformance results are below an acceptable threshold, you're going to miss your service targets, and send customers packing for another less-frustrating service option...namely, a competitor.
Let's start from the beginning. For the purposes of this series, I'm going to provide a preliminary glossary of terms we'll be referring to. The moniker by which each concept is described may be different to what you are used to, but that is not important. The definition, on the other hand, is tantamount.
- Productive Time - Any amount of time that an Agent spends either handling a customer contact, or in a state available for a customer contact to be offered to them.
- Unproductive Time - Any amount of time that an Agent spends either logged off, or unavailable to handle customer contacts.
- Schedule Conformance - This is the total amount of an Agent's actual productive time delivered, compared to the total amount of productive time scheduled, in any given period of time (interval/day/week/month/year). This is usually represented as a percentage.
- Schedule Adherence - This measures how accurately actual Agent behavior, for both productive and unproductive time matches against what is scheduled. The 'how much?' of each isn't as important as when each happens compared to what is scheduled. This also is usually represented as a percentage. See the example below:
In the above example, There is a total of 540 minutes of scheduled time. To measure schedule adherence, you divide the amount of time in adherence by the total time scheduled, which in this example is 9 hours, or 540 minutes.
To further break down the calculation, subtract the total amount of time out of adherence from the total time scheduled, and divide the remainder by the total time scheduled. In other words: (540m - 60m) / 540m = a 90.7% adherence score.
Which measure is more important? Adherence or conformance?
They are both important, and cannot be compared, as they measure different impacts to your ability to provide service to customers. Conformance is a quantitative measure in that it is concerned with the total amount of productive time you get from your Agents versus what is scheduled. This is very important for capacity planning and hiring plan efforts, but isn't quite enough on its own. If you are getting equal to, or more than what you scheduled in productive time, but it doesn't coincide with when your customers are expected to seek service, conformance means nothing. You also need to measure your Agents from a qualitative perspective as well, to see if the productive time you are getting from your staff happens when you actually need it to happen.
This concludes Part I of the series. The next instalment will be devoted to understanding the mathematical and financial impacts of adherence and conformance in the contact center, and we will conclude with recommendations for how to set targets, and different methods of implementation.
I look forward to your comments and feedback! Thank you for reading.
well written -thinking of forwarding this along to our agents team leaders - gain a better understanding of the how and why and perhaps better coach to it. Thanks!
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