Agent Productivity Glossary

As you are certainly aware on a daily basis, the contact center landscape is ever changing.

Today’s call center agents are not only trained to provide customer service, they up‐sell, cross-sell, resolve complex issues, represent the brand, monitor social media sites – the list goes on and on.

And they don’t just use the phone anymore to do their jobs – agents respond to emails, chats, electronic faxes and virtual inquiries via social media channels. They’re in and out of different systems or applications to process orders, review their knowledge base, read emails or complete training courses.  Many of these off‐phone activities are typically classified as shrinkage and considered a necessary evil of call center operations.

Along with new roles, environments and technology comes some new terminology for discussing your contact center operations. 

Here at VITEC, we thought it might be nice if you have a call center/contact center glossary right at your fingertips – we certainly find it to be of benefit to our staff!   

Hope you find this helpful. 

 
www.vitecinc.com
 

a

Agent utilization: The percentage of total agents that are logged in to the phone system, busy handling customer calls. The inverse of Available Time.

Automatic call distributor (ACD): A specialized phone system used for handling incoming calls. The ACD recognizes and answers an incoming call, looks in its database for call routing instructions and distributes to groups of agents(also called a 'queue') based on first‐in, first answered criteria

Auxiliary work state: A work state other than actively handling calls. As an example, agents may go into an auxiliary work state to process paperwork or emails. Agents will not receive calls while in auxiliary work state.

Available Time: the period of time spent waiting to receive a call. The inverse of occupancy.

Average speed of answer (ASA): the average wait in queue experienced by all callers to an ACD group during a specified period. It includes both calls delayed and those answered immediately in the calculation.

• Avoidable shrinkage: Shrinkage that can be controlled by management including training, team meetings, coaching, projects, paperwork, call research, knowledge base, email and call backs. On average, agents spend a third of their day completing these activities.  Also see entry for secondary loss.

b

Benchmarking: The process of measuring performance against some set standard. Benchmarking in the contact center industry refers to comparing demographics, processes, and service with the other organizations to identify strengths, weaknesses, and improvement opportunities in one’s own organization.

• Bill to Pay Ratio: The ratio of hours an agent is billed for their work versus the hours that they are paid.

c

Call review assessment: An assessment of an agent’s call‐handling proficiency usually scored and conducted by a member of your call center’s quality assurance team.

Calls in queue: A real‐time report that refers to the number of calls received by the ACD system but not yet connected to an agent.

Chat: A system that allows any number of logged-in computer users to have a typed, real-time, online conversation.

f

FCR: First Call Resolution ‐ the situation in which a caller’s question is answered or problem solved during the initial call without requiring follow‐up contacts. First call resolution has a high correlation rate with overall customer satisfaction.

i

Idle Time: The time agents spend waiting for calls; that is, not busy with customers on the line or doing after-call work. Can be expressed either as a percentage of total time logged in or in
hours. On Average, agents spend 11% of their day idle.

o

Occupancy: The percent of logged in time that an agent spends in active contact handling states (i.e. on incoming calls, in wrap‐up activity, on outbound calls) compared to sitting idle awaiting a call arrival.

Overlay: See Primary Loss, Secondary Loss and Rostered Staff Factor.

p

• Primary Loss: Shrinkage that falls beyond the control of management – i.e. absenteeism, vacation, paid holidays, late arrival/early departure, breaks and lunch. Refer to Rostered Staff Factor definition for additional information.

r

Real time data: Information on current conditions.  Some “real‐ time” information is real‐time in the strictest sense (e.g., calls in queue and current longest wait). Some real‐time reports require some history (e.g., the last x calls or x minutes) in order to make a calculation (e.g., service level and average speed of answer).

Real time management: Making adjustments to staffing and thresholds in the systems and network, in response to current queue conditions. WFM systems forecast call volume based on historical data limited by 15 minute intervals of time.

Rostered Staff Factor: A numerical factor that leads to the minimum staff needed on schedule over and above base staff required to achieve service level and response time objectives (calculated after base staffing is determined and before schedules are organized).

s

• Secondary Loss: Shrinkage that can be controlled by management to include training, team meetings, coaching, projects, paperwork, call research, knowledge base, email and call backs. On average, agents spend a third of their day on these avoidable shrinkage activities.

Service level: Speed of answer goals that are often expressed as the speed of answer to be attained or as some percentage of calls to be answered within some number of seconds (e.g., 80 percent of calls answered within 30 seconds).

Shrinkage: The percent of paid time that staff are not available to handle calls. Shrinkage is factored into staffing requirements to account for activities such as breaks, meetings, training time, off‐phone activities, paid leave, etc. so that sufficient staff will be scheduled to meet service goals.

Social learning: Also called informal learning, through social media (blogs, forums, polls) that engage agents.

u

Unavailable Time: The amount of time the agent is not ready to accept inbound or place outbound contacts. Unavailable time may include breaks, lunches, auxiliary time for processing administrative work,
etc.

Universal Agent: An agent that can handle multiple types of contacts.

w

Wait Time: The time agents spend waiting for calls; that is, not busy with customers on the line or doing after‐call work. Can be expressed either as a percentage of total time logged in or in hours. On Average, agents spend FIVE WEEKS of the year in wait time.

Now go test your friends on these glossary terms and have fun.