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What is Adherence to Schedule?

Adherence to Schedule Meaning:

If you look at the dictionary meaning of adherence to schedule, it means to be conscientious in supporting or following something or somebody. In terms of a call center, adherence to schedule is about measuring the accuracy of an agent in terms of work schedule. Adhere to schedule is a metric used in the call center to determine whether professionals of the call center are working the amount of time they are scheduled to work or not. It is also termed as a call center agent’s degree of compliance with their assigned schedule. This aspect helps in managing the staff of the call center ensuring that agents are working efficiently in the scheduled work time.

The repercussions of not working as per the agent schedule

In a survey by Call Miner, it was found that on an average 45 million hours are wasted every year because the agent doesn't stick to the schedule. Businesses that are just starting out cannot afford this level of waste since there is a direct fungible loss involved. Efficient planning of agents’ schedule is necessary to maximize the productivity and minimize the investment involved.

How to ensure that contact centers are best utilizing their agents’ time

Contact centers cannot maximize their agents’ productive time unless they have an idea of the wasted agent-hours. Effective and accurate measuring is necessary in this regard. Measuring the agents’ adherence to schedule will help you ensure your company’s time is being effectively used while also enhancing the overall productivity and the customer experience.

Adherence to Schedule: technicalities involved

The time that an agent dedicates towards interacting with the consumers is directly proportional to the agent uptime. However, the key here is that the employee may not be able to focus 100% of this time towards consumer complaints because of the intermittent breaks involved.

Anything close to 60% is considered a good performance and above 80 is extraordinary. Note that it is technically impossible to achieve 100% agent productivity because no human can fully stick to the call center schedule.

The importance of adhere to the schedule

Adhere to schedule is important for optimizing staffing, efficiency, and productivity of an outsourced call centers.

Adherence to Schedule is calculated using following equation:

Adhere to schedule can be negatively impacted when agents arrive late in the office, take extended breaks, and leave early from the office without completing their working hours. Manually changing agent status to “away” or “busy” to avoid fielding calls can indubitably affect the productivity of the company thereby impacting schedule adherence.

How to enhance adherence to schedule in a call center

Call center service providers enhance adherence to schedule with following points:

Optimizing agent training
Promoting efficiency-centric culture
Giving recognition and awards to agents who adhere to schedules
Monitoring call center status
Give regular feedback to agents
Provide incentives on performance

Thus, it is vital for call center agents to be aware of the repercussions for not adhering to the norms. Optimizing adherence to schedule is one of the most important managerial tasks that has a major impact on the overall efficiency and bottom-line of the call center. This factor helps in ensuring that your most valuable asset is utilized optimally.

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What is Adherence to Schedule?

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