Whilst agents are in work it is good practice for them to be logged-into the telephone system, where the ACD can allocate a number of different work activity modes.

In some ACDs this is not good practice as there are insufficient work activity modes to satisfactorily identify all activities.  Hence agents will create a not-ready bucket made up of work and non-work.  Here they maybe combining after-call work with say, breaks, as there is only a not-ready function to identify activity.

This then affects call centre metrics as handling times cannot be calculated as they are immersed with non-work activities.

Similarly, breaks cannot be controlled as they are immersed in the bucket with after call work.

Every endeavour should be made to split such activities within the system.