| |SEPTEMBER 20229CIOReviewIn contact centers one of the ways we cause disengagement is through a metric called adherence. Before you get the pitchforks hear me out, we can get the result we want AND stop causing disengagement through our system.As a refresher adherence is a measure of whether your phone is in the right state/code at the right time. There are variances to this metric along with various names like compliance, accessibility, and so on. Adherence causes an agent to think "do I go to break closer to on time and cut this call short risking a bad monitor OR do I do what is right by the customer relationship and take the hit in adherence." In either case the agent loses through a lower adherence score or risking a poor call audit. The agent can't win!The purpose of adherence is to have the right amount of people in a productive state at the right time of day so our customers get an even delivery of service regardless of the time of day they call. By allowing our agents to take a break/lunch when they want within boundaries you'll achieve the result of having the right amount of people in a productive state AND stop causing disengagement with our agents.Here are some example boundaries we've set at Hunter Douglas; no break/lunch in the first hour of the day, at least two thirds of our staff must be in a productive status every interval of the day, and the agents total productive minutes must average at least 95percentof scheduled for the week.By doing this combined with schedule flexibility we've reduced our average speed of answer by 7percent,reduced our in/out of center shrink by 3percent,reduced our annualized attrition by 8percentall while other metrics like average handle time and contact volume have remained flat.The worry has always been agents will all take their breaks and lunches at the same time and no one will be on the phones to answer calls. What we've found is that the variety of break/lunch times has spread out further than we had with scheduled break and lunch times by avoiding the snowball effects of long calls. The feedback from our agents and our management has been unanimously fantastic.As with the Camry and Odyssey, no amount of management or discipline changed my children. But once I implemented a better system everything changed. We continue to challenge our systems here at Hunter Douglas to solve problems. I recommend you join us and do the same!To dive deeper into the subject I'd recommend reading The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. The purpose of adherence is to have the right amount of people in a productive state at the right time of day so our customers get an even delivery of service regardless of the time of day they call
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