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  • 1.  What is the best option to ignore adherence for agents when they are interacting, however they are scheduled for an activity?

    Posted 25 days ago

    I'm interested in learning how others handle adherence when agents are scheduled for breaks or meals but remain on a call and appear as interacting. What best practices do you follow so agents are not penalized in these cases?


    #WFMConfiguration,BestPractices

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    Melinda Butler

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  • 2.  RE: What is the best option to ignore adherence for agents when they are interacting, however they are scheduled for an activity?

    Posted 20 days ago

    Hi @Melinda Butler,

    My team proactively looks at the adherence an moves the break/lunch to start at the first possible time after the interaction completed.  Since we have the 5 min SCA buffer in place, it is manageable.  Ex: When we look at the schedules for the day prior, we can see the pink "Out of adherence" line at the beginning of the break/meal activity.  We then look at what they were doing during that time and then, if it is an "interacting" status, we will update the start time of the break/meal to when that interaction ended.  

    While I know there are many places that don't do any updating, we do it because it improves SCA metric buy-in from the agents and prevents agents from rushing off interactions.  



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    Gina Palmer
    Manager, Workforce Management
    Papa, Inc.
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: What is the best option to ignore adherence for agents when they are interacting, however they are scheduled for an activity?

    Posted 19 days ago

    Hi Melinda, 

    Best practice is not always the best practice for your business. A couple of notes to provide food for thought. 

    1. You can configure adherence boundaries to the break and meal activity which will allow a window of grace. i.e. if your break time is configured for 10 min, and you configure a 1 min window, then adherence is omitted with a 12 min window. 

    2. Calculate the adherence target based on call AHT (within boundaries) i.e. if your AHT is 5 mins, staff work a 420 min day, they have 2 breaks and a lunch then your adherence target would be 96%

    3. Change the schedules to match (not recommended in my opinion) This covers up the accuracy of the scheduling process and increases your admin time exponentially.  

    Effort to return of outcome needs to be weighed up for your individual business position. 

    Until the Genesys has aligned its WFM capability with CC standard best practice for Adherence, we (our business) have set an adherence target that caters for the non-adherent windows due to staff being 'stuck on a call' and have educated our staff on how this is calculated and what it means. This minimises the heave admin load. We monitor for behaviour via exports and reports we've built as Genesys does not have reporting capability. 

    Most other software will allow you to accept and 'exception' so that you can control adherence outcomes, and reduce the administration required, but Genesys hasn't been able to achieve this yet. 

    In saying this, according to this WFM Adherence exception for agent | Genesys Cloud Ideas Portal it is currently being developed.  Fingers crossed this is rolled out soon!  



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    Laura Horton
    NA
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: What is the best option to ignore adherence for agents when they are interacting, however they are scheduled for an activity?

    Posted 18 days ago

    Just two different philosophies regarding who SCA is actually evaluating: WFM or the agent behavior.  I always recommend taking on the administrative effort to update schedules as needed for getting stuck on a call or being pulled off the phones for a last minute coaching/meeting and using SCA as an agent behavior metric, not a WFM performance metric.  For us (and my previous 5 companies ranging from 100 - 2000 agents) SCA was not "Schedule Adherence" but rather "Schedule Accuracy" -- does your schedule accurately reflect what you were approved to do.  This made the metric more actionable for us while improving buy-in from both agents and leaders.   



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    Gina Palmer
    Manager, Workforce Management
    Papa, Inc.
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: What is the best option to ignore adherence for agents when they are interacting, however they are scheduled for an activity?

    Posted 17 days ago

    Absolutely agree! There are many different philosophies, and I think that's fantastic that you have had success with that. 

    There are many different factors that need to be taken into consideration when you are setting Adherence KPI's. Regardless of the terms. (however, the terms you use can have a significant impact on the perception and acceptance from your staff) 

    There are several questions you need to ask to align your goals with your strategic direction all the while considering your people engagement including (but not limited to) What changes to behaviour are you looking to target? What behaviors will your metric/target drive? Will this create a psychosocial hazard? What are the limitations? i.e. will your target create a false AHT (which then leads into more about your strategy with AHT and how long is your AHT)? Can you implement rules that mitigate impacts? i.e. The 5-minute rule. Do you have the WFM resource capacity to administer your decisions?  and the list goes on...

    It's so important to understand your operations before setting targets and rolling out an approach that will works for your organisational direction. It's the 1 metric that has a huge impact to your service outcomes, your staff behaviour and your business costs. 



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    Laura Horton
    NA
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: What is the best option to ignore adherence for agents when they are interacting, however they are scheduled for an activity?

    Posted 17 days ago

    Good Morning. 

    We adhere fully to Laura Horton's methodology. Our target adherence is set at 95%, which accommodates approximately 24 minutes daily for transition time between customer interactions and scheduled breaks or lunches. Given our average handle time of 5 minutes, this allocation provides agents sufficient buffer to complete their current interaction before transitioning to their designated break periods.

    We actively encourage agents to begin their breaks one minute prior to their scheduled time rather than accepting a new interaction that would potentially delay their break by 5 minutes or more. With a workforce of 1,200 agents, our Workforce Management team lacks the capacity to adjust all breaks and lunches retroactively.

    If we were to systematically adjust all schedules to match actual behavior, we would effectively be targeting 100% adherence, which would render the metric meaningless as a performance indicator. The purpose of measuring adherence is to evaluate actual performance against planned schedules, not to ensure perfect scores through continuous adjustments.



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    Joel White
    Republic Services WFM Mgr
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    Original Message


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