Schedule Adherence & Conformance, Part I: Introduction & Definitions

Dubious management of schedule adherence and conformance can disengage employees, impact customer satisfaction, and cost serious amounts of cash.  That's fancy-talk for "we could all be out of a job".  This series of posts is aimed at helping contact center professionals grasp the fundamentals of adherence and conformance, and outline a roadmap for successful implementation (or correction), and control.

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.

The WFM Manifesto

Regardless of the particular product or service supported by any contact center, customers expect three main things:

• Customers expect their contacts (i.e. calls, e-mails, chat sessions) to be answered quickly.

• Customers expect to deal with somebody with enough skill to respond to their needs.

• Customers expect cheerful, motivated, and responsive interaction.

Hitting that sweet-spot of cost-driven operational improvements and excellence in service quality is what workforce management (WFM) is all about, and in order for WFM to be a successful endeavor, its presence needs not only to empower managers, but individual agents as well. Sounds like common sense, does it not? Surprisingly, this is more of a guerrilla mindset than one would think. With WFM processes, tools, and technology focused on agent empowerment and customer experience, the most significant challenges facing contact center managers today become solvable, simple problems. A robust and effective WFM implementation should: