You spent all the money on software, why is your attendance still so bad? Across all attendance tracking software I have researched or personally used, there continues to be one glaring problem. NOTHING IS IN PLACE TO INSURE THE SOFTWARE AND/OR ANALYTICS ARE USED!
In the last 20 years, technology has continued to improve allowing for more & more ways to view attendance data & analytics. That being said, many call centers still suffer with poor attendance. Why is that? My unique background working in both the operations and workforce management sides of the business have helped me get to the heart of the issue. The graphic below shows what would be considered the typical industry approach to a call center with so called attendance automation software.
Highlighted in red is the thing that all software I have seen continues to fail in. In a 50 person call center, you will have about 4 supervisors. In a 5000 person call center you might have 200+ supervisors. While all call centers have a standardized attendance policy, companies do little or typically nothing to ensure the attendance policy is administered evenly across all teams. This leads to a host of problems...
Poor Attendance
This goes to the top of the list because this is an immediate hit to your budget. The higher your daily shrink from attendance the more staff you are carrying just to fill the gap.
Inability to Terminate
If CSR A is constantly in violation of the attendance policy with no repercussion, CSR B is hard to terminate without a legal concern on your hand.
Low Morale
CSRs who are actually being held accountable by their managers for attendance, rightfully they will feel unfairly treated compared to CSRs who have a manager that is lax in the enforcement of an attendance policy.
Poor Attendance Encouraged
Nobody wants to think that they are encouraging poor attendance, if CSRs know they are likely not going to be held accountable they have little reason to value good attendance.
Nobody wants to think their front line management team needs to be monitored, in reality its the most critical part of any attendance process. Which means it should be the given the most consideration. Regardless of the attendance policy in place, if its not followed consistently, it becomes useless. Personally, I did a deep dive analysis for a previous employer and was able to provide coaching statistics for the senior leadership team. See the graphic below for the highlights of these findings.
Ultimately the findings outlined above drove a significant shift in how attendance was coached and followed up on which led to much improved attendance. I am still waiting to find a developer who wants a company to spend significant dollars but not forget this major aspect of what it takes to manage an attendance policy.
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