How to Detect Call Avoidance Without Micromanaging

When call center reps avoid taking calls, it creates problems across your entire operation.  Customers get stuck on lengthy hold times, the call queue gets longer, and other reps have to step in and shoulder a heavier workload to keep pace.

With call avoidance, the bad reps take a break, while the good ones get burned out.

And the reps know what’s going on — they might not tell their manager, but they know who is working hard and who is slacking off. If the serial call avoider doesn’t face any consequences, their colleagues start avoiding calls, too.

I know this is hard. I know this is uncomfortable. No adult wants to have to babysit another adult and make sure they stay on task.

Unfortunately, call avoidance is really common. And if you don’t address it quickly, the behavior will spread.

Call avoidance has become an art form

Some reps work so hard at avoiding calls that it’s a shame they can’t redirect all that creative energy into doing their actual job.

I’m not being mean or exaggerating here. Just go into any online forum about call centers, and you will find long discussions about strategies for dodging calls.

The agents writing and responding to these posts usually hate their jobs and want to do as little work as possible. Sometimes it’s out of spite for their employee as opposed to just laziness. Many of the call avoidance strategies seem far more demanding than talking to customers.

The posters often list grievances about how they are treated at the call center as justification for avoiding calls. They never mention the strain this puts on their colleagues, and fail to see that their actions are legally described as time theft.

Here are some of the recurring call avoidances strategies I discovered:

• Needlessly extending talk time through idle small talk.
• Maxing out after-call work (ACW) times without justification.
• Taking an unusually high number or length of bio breaks.
• Logging in and out of phone systems to appear temporarily unavailable.
• Abusing chat features to show “active” status while actually being away.
• Feigning technical difficulties to receive fewer calls.

The extended small talk tactic involves keeping customers on the line as long as possible to limit the amount of calls they have to take in a single shift. Similarly, when support agents draw out their ACW times, they’re essentially reducing their availability even though no work is occurring.

Another scheme support agents use to show up as active in their chat statuses while being physically away from the workstation is to use an external program to simulate mouse movements and periodic chat messages. These kinds of tools can make it incredibly challenging for managers to distinguish between reps who are working hard versus those who are trying to game the system.

People shared tricks for exploiting specific call center software. Seriously. For example, I read about one tactic that worked on Genesys where employees could essentially trick the platform into bumping their number to the back of the automatic call distribution order.

If you’re currently managing a call center you might be wise to do a little Google research into “[Your software] call avoidance tricks.” Don’t be shocked when you find all sorts of intricate strategies for slacking off.

Call avoidance harms customers and hurts your brand

Who are the real victims of call avoidance?

It’s easy to think of call avoidance as primarily an internal issue, but your customers are the ones who feel the real detrimental effects. Every time a representative ducks a call, your customers get stuck waiting in the call queue even longer. These excessive hold times can quickly wear down even the most patient people — over time, this can be detrimental to your brand’s reputation and public perception.

With customer loyalty and retention on the line, call avoidance isn’t just an internal problem for your call center managers to solve — it can stop your team from delivering the responsive, speedy customer service demanded in a competitive marketplace.

Calculating the costs of call avoidance

It’s not just your customers who will pay the price for call avoidance — your contact center will see direct financial costs from your reps who avoid taking calls instead of working. Let’s consider an example case.

A contact center has 100 reps working 5 hours of an 8-hour shift after accounting for breaks, meetings, etc. If even 10% of reps spend just 1 in 10 of their available hourly minutes actively avoiding calls, that equates to 8,500 minutes per week in wasted salary expense.

Given an average hourly wage of $15, those minutes of deliberate avoidance tally up to $2,125 per week, over $100k yearly just in base pay for time not working. And that’s with very conservative assumptions — many centers see far higher avoidance rates.

The excess costs don’t stop at direct wages, either. Call avoidance will result in longer hold time for your customers, which will only lead to increased call volumes in your contact center. Then, these increased call volumes will lead to additional hiring demands.

When employees avoid calls, it starts a domino effect that can wreak havoc on your company’s bottom line if you’re not careful.

Micromanaging call avoidance: What not to do

Detecting call avoidance is easier said than done. And it’s even more difficult to monitor this kind of activity without turning into a babysitter who has to micromanage employees.

The trouble is that if an adult employee wants to avoid calls and lie about it, there are all sorts of ways they can cover their tracks. Without knowing what you are looking for, the metrics of someone dodging their calls can appear similar to a rep who is sticking to their daily quotas.

Without proof, accusing your reps of avoiding their responsibilities can quickly lead to resentment from your reps and lower morale in the workplace.

For example, trying to regulate something as personal as a bathroom break creates an unpleasant, negative culture that will only hurt the performance of your reps and make your contact center an uncomfortable place to work. Yet simply ignoring the issue will allow some reps to exploit these privileges.

So what are you supposed to do?

The best way to deter this kind of behavior is by addressing the motivations behind call avoidance through better employee engagement, improved site operations, and cautious tracking of usage patterns in your call center software — not micromanaging your employees.

In the next section we’ll explore a few different ways you can handle suspected call avoidance without creating a toxic surveillance culture in the workplace.

How to address call avoidance

We’ve seen how call avoidance can have major consequences for customers and employees alike — reps who avoid their work create huge strains on their teammates and your business’s customers.

It’s one of the clearest warning signs of an unhappy employee. This is something you have to address, and the quicker, the better. Here are four tactics to try.

1. Set clear employee expectations

Having clear, written policies around availability expectations for your support agents is crucial. All of your representatives should understand what an appropriate break duration is, when they can switch their phones to temporarily unavailable statuses, and how long they can be away from their desks.

Without having these expectations laid out as a reference, your reps can claim they are being singled out unfairly for call avoidance crackdowns. By setting up these transparent policies in advance, you can protect both company interests and the interests of your employees before call avoidance becomes a real issue.

2. Spot-check usage data for patterns

Instead of micro-tracking every rep in your contact center, you should try to analyze their usage data to identify any anomalies instead. Are there certain reps with many more ACW sessions than their teammates? Do certain reps or groups frequently have overlapping breaks or gaps in their availability?

By checking your reps’ usage data at regular intervals, you can start to uncover the underlying reasons behind these patterns and identify instances of call avoidance.

Call center quality monitoring is standard practice — and it’s there to protect reps just as much as the company. For example, during onboarding, be sure to share examples of how call recordings have helped employees defend themselves against unfair complaints.

Ensure that employees understand that watching usage patterns is a routine part of maintaining healthy call center operations. No one wants to feel surveilled, so make sure that you monitor employees without overstepping their privacy.

3. Have skip-level meetings

You and your managers may be unknowingly missing or enabling avoidance behavior within your teams. By conducting skip-level meetings with your reps, you can give higher-level leaders in your contact center visibility into potential avoidance or management issues across your teams. This is because your reps will be more candid when speaking directly to senior site leadership than with their direct supervisor.

Call center reps know if someone on the team isn’t pulling their weight. Giving them the opportunity to talk with someone outside their team is a much faster way to find out what’s going on than digging into call logs and trying to spot anomalies.

You can also use anonymous surveys to encourage feedback from your reps.

4. Document and course correct

If you suspect call avoidance in your call center, you should consider compiling relevant call center performance metrics to document the issue before making any accusations.

Speak to the suspected rep(s) in a constructive manner and keep the conversation focused on removing roadblocks to their future success. If you’ve already set clear expectations with your reps, but these violations continue, you can increase the disciplinary actions you take — whether that be a warning or potential employee termination.

Disclaimer: TechRepublic does not provide legal advice around terminations. Please consult an employment attorney licensed in your state on appropriate procedures for escalating discipline issues due to call avoidance in your contact center. The end goal should always be to correct employee behaviors and improve workplace culture through positive incentives first.