“Time is on your side.” Jerry Ragovoy
In my previous topic I suggested an emphasis towards Historical Schedule Adherence instead of Real-Time Schedule Adherence.
I also suggested how to implement with success by the following three steps:
- Set clear expectations.
- Hold them accountable.
- Follow through.
IDEA #2 – Establish effective Historical Schedule Adherence Goals
I promised to help you set proper goals for Historical Schedule Adherence (HSA).
So let’s get to it.
- What are your current results in terms of schedule adherence?
- What are your current results in terms of schedule conformance?
- Are you satisfied with these results?
- By how much would you like to improve them?
Based on where you stand at the current time, take a few minutes to understand your results and determine what you can do to change them.
Consider other elements:
- What is the average length of your calls? If your calls last longer than 5 minutes, how likely is an agent going to be out of adherence because they received a call 3 minutes before going on break. And how does this incite them to log out or worst to go into “post call processing” to avoid being “penalized” for not going on their lunch break as per their schedule?
- Do you schedule breaks other than their lunch?
- Do your agents know when they can Log off the phone versus when they can go into post call processing mode? Have you clearly defined those guidelines?
A quick aid to get a good idea of the cost of your success or lack thereof with schedule adherence is to calculate the number of minutes agents are out of conformance on average for a given day, and multiply it by the number of days they work in a year.
If you are managing schedule adherence and you are managing it too strictly and your employee turnover is too high or if your employee satisfaction is too low you might want to think about how much you would save if you were to allow for a little bit of leeway in your conformance goals as a trade-off for lower turnover.
You should consider how much you are spending to manage schedule adherence in real time.
Consider eliminating real time management and transfer part of those savings to lower goals on conformance to improve employee experience.
I invite you to use our free tool Schedule Adherence Goal Setting to help you calculate the goals for adherence and for conformance that would better suit your environment under a more employee-friendly approach that still ensures you deliver the best customer experience at the lowest cost.
Balancing customer experience, employee satisfaction and shareholder satisfaction remains an art and a science.
But if you keep all three in mind when establishing a schedule adherence strategy, your chances of success in achieving all three are much better.
Next topic will be how to wrap this all up in a bow by helping you to ensure accountability from all your employees.