You go to great measures to create a fair schedule in your contact center — and agents still complain about it. Here’s what to do when they hate the schedule.
Before scheduling hurts morale and productivity, take these steps from The Contact Center Association:
- Gauge satisfaction. Survey agents, asking them to rate group and individual schedules and the scheduling process.
- Get focused. Invite agents to be part of a focus group that learns about scheduling constraints and airs their issues with the process.
- Create and simulate. Create new schedules and run a simulation, allowing agents to poke holes in it to work out the final kinks before implementing.
And try these unique ways to re-work schedules:
- Mix full- and part-time shifts, assigning full-timers first and filling in gaps with part-timers.
- Allow missed time by having the agent who leaves two hours early to make it up in the same pay period during hours management chooses.
- Offer shopping/gym time or two-hour lunches with shifts in arrival and leave time as alternatives to traditional lunch periods.
- Switch break times to different hours during the week to meet demand.
- Change 40-hour shifts to 8×5, 4×10, 3×12.5, etc.
- Allow agents (who’ve earned the privilege) to trade schedules.
