- The workforce management team is wasting precious time and leadership resources by manually entering exceptions to improve adherence scores.
- Many contact centers report that their agents learned how to manipulate the system, and hide behind exceptions that shouldn’t have been excused.
- Exceptions can mask problematic behaviors and allow for unchecked performance and service violations.
- Exceptions don’t improve adherence or productivity. In fact, because exception codes can be manipulated to hide work avoidance, they may actually be making matters worse.
Making exceptions the exception: Recommendations for modern adherence management and rollout strategies
September 18, 2023
Schedule adherence is a workforce management metric that describes how effectively an agent follows their schedule. Real-time adherence shows what an agent is currently doing versus their schedule, whereas historical adherence reports look at an agent’s adherence over a given period.Adherence is critical to both the customer and the employee experience. High rates of schedule adherence ensures calls are answered quickly, customers are well served, and employees are able to take well deserved breaks as scheduled.Yet schedule adherence has gotten complicated. Contact center operations are increasingly complex, and customers expect omnichannel, 24/7, personalized support. While speed is king, some calls may far exceed average handle time (AHT) standards and span multiple channels in ways that disrupt a one-size-fits-all schedule.In response, contact center leaders have traditionally managed disruptions like this by entering “exceptions” into their workforce management systems to account for unplanned, out-of-adherence behaviors. However, this is an outdated practice for several reasons: