INTEGRATED TIME CLOCK AND PAYROLL APPLICATION
Payroll Shrinkage
You’ve undoubtedly seen this behavior from agents: they arrive for work at 8:00 am and immediately login to the company’s time and attendance system so they appear to be on time.
But then, the agents hike down to the café to grab breakfast and they take their time returning to their desk by visiting all their friends along the way, finally arriving at their desk about 10 minutes later than when they logged in. Their time card says 8:00 am not 8:10 am. What’s the big deal? It’s only 10 minutes – until you do the math.
Let’s do the math!
Assumption:
Contact center managers agree that easily 10 minutes per agent per day is lost. It can be at the start of a shift, returning from a break late, leaving early for lunch or the end of the day.
Example:
100 full time agents, 5 work days, 50 weeks per year, $13.00 hour
Calculation:
Cost per Minute =.22/minute ($13.00/60 minutes = .22)
Cost per Agent =.22/minute multiplied by 10 minutes = $2.20/agent
Cost per Day = 10 minutes multiplied by 100 agents = 1,000 minutes multiplied by $2.20/agent=$2,200/day
Cost per Week =$2,200/day multiplied by 5 working days = $11,000/week
Cost per Year = $11,000/week multiplied by 50 weeks is $550,000/year. That’s $550,000 a year spent on paying agents to eat donuts and socialize!
When you look at those staggering numbers, how can you brush off those 10 minutes any longer? What else can a company do with that money?
Syncing up Time Clocks and Agent Logins
Yes, time and attendance systems should be integrated with the contact center platform.
By syncing up the time clock and the contact center platform, the gap is eliminated, providing the time clock is also integrated with the payroll system. The technology forces contact center agents to be available when they login. With one single sign on, the agent is automatically logged into the contact center platform simultaneously with their timekeeping system. This puts agents into “ready” status; ready to take calls. If the agent changes his status, his supervisor will see the status change within the real-time dashboard in the contact center platform. The supervisor will also see the daily trends in the reports and can provide real data to address the agent’s behavior. Take the excuses away from the agent and make it easy for the supervisor to track by integrating time and attendance with the contact center platform.
Payroll API’s
How API’s work: The contact center platform sends out an API (application programming interface) every time the agent logs in or out, updating the time clock.
It notes the time electronically to the time clock. It is transparent to the user, as it all happens in the background. This API technology makes it super easy to integrate the time clock to the contact center platform, creating one single login for the agent and eliminating the payroll shrinkage. It will force behavior change from your agents and they will arrive earlier to get their coffee and donut on their own time, not on company time.
With API technology, there is no longer a reason to avoid payroll shrinkage. By integrating time and attendance with the contact center platform the cost of eating donuts on company time disappears. Turn “donuts time” into productivity time!
Syncing with Workforce Management
Complete integration of the time clock, contact center platform and workforce management application will give your ROI the biggest boost yet.
Companies rely too much on floor supervisors to review and reconcile time and attendance to match WFM. This manual process creates inconsistent results due to human error. Supervisors use different methodologies, speed through the task not caring too much, or aren’t sure how to get the data to match, which ends with inconsistent results. Managers who use this data realize that the data doesn’t make sense and begin questioning the integrity of the data. Managers learn to distrust the reported data and don’t use it for key decision-making. When the time clock, contact center platform and workforce management are fully integrated you eliminate manual reconciliation and create consistent metrics. Good consistent data is what drives the contact center.
Time Theft
It’s impressive how many contact centers rely on the agent to “fill in” their time card.
Agents will mark it “8:00 AM” even if they showed up at 8:03 – again the same argument – those 3 minutes, multiplied by the number of agents, times every day they manipulate their time card, adds up. Agents have been known to log into the payroll system from their smartphones while in the contact center parking lot, “marking” them on time. Yet they are not even in the building. If you still trust your agents, think again about what else you can do with that money.
By integrating the time clock into the contact center platform, you will save a ton of money, change agent behavior for the positive and be in control of your contact center.
INDUSTRY SERVICE TIPS
1. Integrate the time clock application with the cloud based contact center platform to eliminate time shrinkage using API technology.
2. Expect promptness, inspect promptness and the supervisor will get promptness.
NEXT STEPS
Today integrating applications has never been easier with API technology. Don’t be intimidated by the overwhelming task. The cost savings alone is worth the effort.
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