Delivering 'Ready' is key to achieving maximum efficiency and improving call handling capacity.

Ready is the term used to describe a pair of key work activity modes and includes, the time waiting for calls (Available) and the time talking to callers (Talk).  Ready in some parlours can be the referred to as the single work activity mode of Available.

One of the key elements of poor behaviour is when advisors are not where they should be (when they should be at their desk), and not doing what they should be (when they should be taking calls).  Targeting Ready, changes this behaviour completely.  By being 'Ready', we would like to maximise the correct behaviour of being Available to take calls and Talking to callers.  At the same time we want to minimise Not Ready, After Call Wrap and Break time. As we are not ready to take calls if we are in the work activity modes of Wrap or Break.

Ready

Not Ready

This doesn't mean reduce the quality of after call work or minimise breaks beyond your prescribed limits, indeed staff should be encouraged to take up their break time.  After Call Work, often becomes erroneous when advisors write down customer details and then attempt to input after the call, they should be encouraged to key-in during the call, thus improving talktime.  However, if you have run a call centre, you will appreciate advisors may increase their break time by going into After Call Work!

Call centres are difficult places to manage, they are not like back-office functions where you hand out 50 units to process.  In a call centre we rely on advisors to collect their work (from the queue) and ideally, we would like them to take calls when there is a requirement and not, when it pleases them to do so.

Our 'health' indicators alongside Ready are Average Handle Time, call volume and quality.  This ensures advisors are not merely maximising talk-time with fewer callers.

If we merely ask advisors to deliver 60 calls a day, they will.  To achieve this some will cut callers off or keep calls short.  Ready avoids these scenarios, because it targets talk-time (to say, 60% of logged-on time), this means the short, inadequate calls do not score too many talk-time points.  Which means if we are targeting talk-time, with the appropriate average handle time, the calls answered figure, by default, will be delivered by the advisor.

In some centres, this approach can improve capacity by up to 50%.