Respectfully keeping an eye on agents through adherence monitoring has become essential to having success in a modern contact center. Using a data driven approach to improve agent productivity and reduce costs, adherence information has many applications outside of who was on the phone during any given day. In fact, adherence data is one of the best information sources for reporting that a contact center can utilize to drive innovation and results.

Below are a few of the key benefits when it comes to adherence reporting for a modern contact center.

It can help with understanding channel issues – One of the more common uses for adherence reporting is when channels like phone or email start having issues. For example, if the handle times of phone calls spiked, there could be several different reasons as to why this happened. Adherence reporting can’t go into all the areas of an issue specifically, but what it can do is provide valuable information around agent trends. If some agents are taking additional breaks and are out of adherence more than usual, it may be an indirect result of phone issues becoming more time consuming and difficult to solve. The complex issues could be causing additional fatigue. Use adherence reporting as an important data source to help explain and resolve greater contact center problems.

It enables many different types of comparison reporting – The more agents you have, the more important tracking adherence becomes. Having workforce management (WFM) software with comparison reporting capabilities is valuable for learning how broader adherence metrics are being calculated. A WFM analyst can compare single agents, multiple locations, unique departments or teams, agents assigned to a specific supervisor, and more to get a better understanding of their adherence data.

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It can help drive actionable and relevant alerts – A WFM analyst may look at their reporting and notice a handful of agents are out of adherence much more often than everyone else. Instead of manually watching their adherence state all day, the analyst can configure adherence alert reports at set intervals to know when one of these agents unexpectedly falls out of adherence. The alerts only convey one sided information and an agent will not know that a WFM analyst is keeping tabs on their performance. It's a breakdown in communication.

It’s a key data source for long term trend analysis – Modern WFM software creates reports around adherence throughout the day and, when it ends, everything is encapsulated into a daily report. But what happens when you need broader adherence trends to map out a new strategy? WFM software can also take all of the adherence data compiled over many months and discover important findings in a matter of minutes. Does one location have agents frequently falling out of adherence during the holidays? Go back in time and find the exact information you need to let the right people.

In short, adherence reporting benefits a modern contact center because it helps with striking a good balance between agent accountability and productivity. It shouldn’t be used consistently to reprimand agents, but instead should be leveraged to ensure the right agents have the support they need throughout the day to be efficient.