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What is Adherence? A measure of the time that an advisor has worked with respect to the time that they are scheduled to work. Time in Adherence / Scheduled Time x 100

What is Conformance? A measure of the time that an advisor works with respect to the time that they are being paid to work. Time worked by the advisor / Time the advisor was paid to work x 100

“While conformance and adherence are two separate metrics, it is important that they are measured in tandem to gain a true, accurate representation of an individual’s productivity.”

What is the Impact of Low Adherence? Most contact centres put a lot of time and effort into forecasting and scheduling, but that doesn’t achieve anything if agents don’t adhere to the schedule. The impact that this can have on KPIs isn’t always clear to agents, or even to planners. There is a tendency to believe that so long as the correct number of hours are worked in total, it doesn’t matter if they align exactly with the schedule. While it’s true that the impact of one person starting a few minutes late on one occasion will usually be small, there can be major consequences if this habit is widespread.

What Disrupts Adherence? Last minute calls, slow login process, agents unaware of the impact

What Should we Aim for? – Some non-adherence is inevitable, and it just might not always be worth the trouble to target the final intractable 5%. It may be preferable to aim for a reasonable target – say 90% – and not push too hard to exceed it. This allows for the reasonable issues that agents face, and doesn’t penalise them for elements beyond their control. When adopting this approach, it’s important that managers look out for individual abuse. If there is 10% variability up for grabs – and that fact becomes known – there may well be staff who use it to their advantage.