Schedule Adherence in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Schedule Adherence in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service

    Schedule adherence in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service enables organizations to monitor how well agents follow their assigned schedules, enhancing operational efficiency. It tracks clock-in and clock-out events tied to agent availability status changes, aggregating this data to generate adherence and conformance reports. Adherence measures how closely agents stick to their schedules for assigned work, while conformance compares total time worked to scheduled time regardless of adherence.

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    This capability helps organizations optimize staffing, improve forecasting accuracy, and identify coaching opportunities to enhance agent performance.

    Key Features

    • Centralized Schedule Access: Managers can view all team schedules and compliance status from a single location.
    • Performance Targets: Managers can set expected adherence percentages to drive team performance.
    • Time Attendance Insights: Detailed clock-in and clock-out times are available for both current and historical analysis.
    • Data Adjustment: Managers have the ability to modify agent clock-in and clock-out times as needed.
    • Configuration Flexibility: Administrators can configure threshold percentages and formulas for adherence and conformance calculations.
    • Event Tracking: The system generates clock-in and clock-out events automatically as agents change availability states (e.g., Available, Break, Busy, Offline).
    • Performance Indicators: Key metrics such as Start Time, End Time, Planned Work, Time Not Worked, and adherence/conformance percentages are provided in daily time worked summaries.

    How It Works

    Agents log their presence status in the Customer Service Management (CSM) Agent Workspace, triggering clock-in and clock-out events as they start work, take breaks, and finish their day. These events are aggregated to produce detailed time worked summaries and enable managers to monitor and coach agents based on actual performance versus planned schedules.

    Benefits for Managers and Administrators

    • Gain comprehensive visibility into team schedule compliance and attendance patterns.
    • Use historical data to improve future staffing and scheduling accuracy.
    • Identify and address adherence gaps through targeted coaching.
    • Configure system settings to align adherence tracking with organizational policies.

    Important Considerations

    With the Tokyo release, Legacy Workforce Optimization is being phased out and hidden on new instances, though it remains supported for existing customers.

    To enable schedule adherence tracking, administrators must activate the Agent Time Work Event Trigger business rule, which records the necessary clock-in and clock-out events.

    You can use schedule adherence to monitor whether your team members are adhering and conforming to the schedules and to improve the operational efficiency of your organization.

    Important:
    Starting with the Tokyo release, Legacy Workforce Optimization is being prepared for future deprecation. It will be hidden and no longer activated on new instances but will continue to be supported. For details, see the Deprecation Process [KB0867184] article in the Now Support Knowledge Base.

    Clock-in and clock-out events are generated as agents change their availability status. The time between the clock-in and clock out events are aggregated to create schedule adherence and conformance reports.

    Adherence measures how closely agents follow their schedule to complete their assigned work. Conformance measures the agents’ total time at work compared to the total scheduled time period, regardless of adherence.

    Schedule adherence helps your organization to do the following actions:
    • Measure whether the effort spent on demand forecasting and scheduling team members is used in an optimal manner.
    • Plan for more effective staffing needs in the future based on your insights into the historical use of agent resources.
    • Discover coaching opportunities for your agents when there are gaps in their adherence. For more information, see Coaching in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service.
    As a manager, you can do the following actions:
    • Access the schedule of all of your teams from one location and gain insights on whether your team is complying with published schedules.
    • Increase your team's performance by setting expected adherence targets.
    • View the time attendance of your agents by looking at such details as clock-in and clock-out times.
    • Analyze the historical time attendance of your team members.
    • View planned versus actual historical data for your team and individual agents.
    • Modify the clock-in and clock-out times of your agents.

    As an administrator, you can set the threshold percentages and change the formulas for calculating schedule adherence and conformance.

    Schedule Adherence for Customer Service in action

    Watch this short video to understand how managers and agents use Schedule Adherence in Workforce Optimization for Customer Service

    Consider the following steps to determine the schedule adherence and conformance:
    1. The administrator sets the Agent Time Work Event Trigger business rule as active to record the clock-in and clock-out times of customer service agents.
    2. An agent works for the Customer Service operations team and reports to a manager. Let's assume this scenario is a typical work day​:
      1. The agent logs in to CSM Agent Workspace​.
      2. The agent changes the presence status to Available and starts work. The clock-in event gets generated.
      3. The agent changes the presence status to Break and goes for lunch. The clock-out event gets generated.
      4. When the agent comes back from lunch and answers ​a phone call, the presence state becomes Busy and the clock-in event gets generated.
      5. The agent then logs out from CSM ​Agent Workspace or changes the presence status to Offline​. The clock-out event gets generated.
      6. At the end-of-the-day, the agent's time worked summary is generated with key performance indicators (KPIs), such as Start Time, End Time, Planned Work, Time Not Worked, Available Non Planned Time, Time Worked, and Adherence%, Conformance %​.
    3. The agent's manager logs in to Manager Workspace to view the agent's time worked in the Team Calendar. The manager can also view the agent's actual time worked and working pattern for all historical days. If required, the manager can coach the agent to a desired performance that fits in with the team culture.