IDLE TIME
BY JENNIFER LEE, INTRADIEM
ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED BY ADOBE IMAGES
MAKING THE MOST OF IDLE TIME AUTOMATION CAN HELP AGENTS AND IMPROVE CXs.
The unpredictability of idle time among contact center agents has always posed a challenge for workforce managers and planners. A little downtime between customer calls could be useful if it allowed agents to complete off-call tasks or even just catch their breath.
Unfortunately, downtime is random and, above all, brief. A Metrigy survey we have been citing found that 29 % of the idle time agents experience during an eight-hour shift lasts only a few seconds and another 47 % lasts just a few minutes. That ' s not long enough to be restful and to be truly productive.
Depending on the season, day of the week, or even hour of the day, the broad outlines of customer demand can be roughly anticipated. But within those broad outlines lies unknowable variation, and until now there’ s never been an effective way to recover value from that uncertainty.
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UNFORTUNATELY, DOWNTIME IS RANDOM AND, ABOVE ALL, BRIEF.