I Pinky Promise

Today we caught one of our agent's "toggling". This is when you switch from available to unavailable on your phone panel, resetting your position in the queue, or line to take phone calls. The agent we caught was being paid hourly and avoided taking calls for almost 3 hours. This resulted in them getting paid three hours wages for doing absolutely nothing.

How did we catch them? Fancy trace reports? High tech work force management software?

They were showing new trainees how to do the exactly same thing, and bragging about it.

In the immortal words of the Guinness ad guys... "Brilliant!"

We pulled her in the office to write her up, and the conversation goes something like this.

Supervisor- "So we caught you toggling. (Insert long explanation about how we just paid you for doing jack shit and how that harms our revenue, go figure, its bad, blah blah.) What I want to ask you is; why shouldn't I terminate your employment right now?"

Agent- "Uhhh.... I'm really sorry, I wont do it again. I will shake on it."

Supervisor- "Well right now the only way to ensure that you won't do it again is to separate you. So try again, why are you a valuable employee?"

Agent- "Seriously, I'm really sorry, I want to try harder in the future".

We ended up giving her a final warning and allowing her another chance. She was upfront and honest. It goes a long way when you own up to your mistakes.

After the conversation I called my manager and let him know we were going to retain her with a warning based on good faith. He asked me for more details.

Supervisor- "Well, when I asked her what guarantee she would give us it wouldn't happen again, she said she would shake on it. Great huh?"

Manager- "Hmmm... Not good enough. Call her back into the office and say we need her to pinky swear."