Call Center Management Featured Article
Improving Attendance in the Contact Center
It costs a lot to run a contact center, and most of your investment is in your agents. You pay them a salary and benefits, plus the costs of recruiting, hiring and training them. Add to that hardware, software and support costs for desktops and phone systems, plus rent, furniture, utilities and other facility costs. You pay your supervisors, your analysts, your workforce management person and your trainers, who exist almost exclusively to serve your agents, which drives up the costs even further.
At the same time, you’re worried about the quality of customer support you’re providing, and whether your customer experience is improving. The last thing you need is agents who simply don’t show up. This throws everyone off, and when it happens too often, it can threaten the quality of experience for customers.
Most contact centers experience a higher-than-average number of days of worker absence. So how do you boost attendance and minimize unscheduled days off? There’s no one easy way to do it, but there are some steps call center management can take to encourage workers to show up.
Improve employee engagement. While all employees get sick and miss work sometimes, disengaged workers do it far more often, even taking days off when they’re not actually sick. Employees who are more engaged with their jobs are more likely to show up. You may wish to start an attendance bonus program that hands out rewards to workers who go so long without missing a shift. It may also help to improve the physical contact center environment and take suggestions from workers regarding how you can do more to improve the call center.
Offer some part-time shifts. Many workers would work less than full time if they could because of childcare or elder care responsibilities, or because they have a second job. For these workers, consider offering part-time shifts and they may experience fewer absences.
Help workers understand the impact of missed shifts. When a worker doesn’t show up, the workload is often piled upon his or her coworkers, who must pick up the slack. During orientation, help agents understand the ramifications of missing a shift, both on coworkers and on customers. Some contact centers post signs that read, “Absence makes your friends work harder.”
Help agents time their breaks. Consider giving agents small timers that give them a two-minute warning when the break is over. In some cases, agents on breaks simply aren’t keeping track of time.
Police sick time carefully. If agents are going to be out for multiple days for serious illnesses, don’t be afraid to ask for doctor’s notes. If you find agents abusing sick time policy, it may take some dismissals by call center management to show other agents you mean business when it comes to absences.
Give agents remote access to their schedules. Many workforce management and scheduling solutions allow agents to keep track of their schedules on their phones or tablets remotely, so they always know when their shifts begin.
Edited by Maurice Nagle