Adherence to schedule is sometimes referred to as 'customer time' as it covers the Work Activity Modes of Talk time, After Call Wrap time and Available time.

This covers an advisors total scheduled time excluding Breaks, hence the Work Activity Modes for the customer.  As such we are measuring how much advisors adhere to their schedule.

Adherence Work Activity Modes

There is a desire in some call centres to track every single activity such as training, meetings etc, but this is not good practice and advisors should be logged-off for these activities.

As a guide, the following represents benchmark standards for percentage time.

Adherence Schedule Percentages

This falls in line with our Occupancy (Talk + Wrap) and Ready (Talk + Available) metrics.  Where we are seeking 75% Occupancy and Ready levels, we look for a 90% Adherence to Schedule.  Breaks make up the missing 10%.

In terms of Adherence time per hour, we are looking for the following times:

Adherence Times

Total Adherence to Schedule time will then look something like this

Total Adherence

This allows an average 6 minutes per hour break.

If advisors adopt the correct Work Activity Modes, they will be available to take calls when they arrive.  If there is any over-resourcing, we will merely see Availability, rising, with Talk & After Call Wrap, falling.

Some call centres use Adherence to Schedule as the key performance metric, but we do not advocate this unless there is a drill-down to individual Work Activity Modes.  Adherence should be regulated by Ready.