Schedule Adherence & Conformance, Part II: Impacts to the Contact Center

In Part I, Introductions & Definitions, we introduced ourselves to adherence and conformance--the qualitative and quantitative sides of fulfilment for workforce management forecasts and schedules.   In this instalment, we get into more detail about financial and service implications for the contact center.

It's just a few minutes here and there.  What's the big deal?

The table below shows what happens when we have 350 contacts per hour with an average handle time (AHT) of 320 seconds (or 62 agents worth of workload).  Let’s assume we had planned to have 69 Agents in chairs to handle those calls in order to deliver an ASA of less than 20 seconds.  What happens if just 5% of our staff (in this case, 4 people) are not adhering to their work schedule during this period?  Note what happens with 65 staff in place:

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: