Connect to IntercomSchedule Adherence
Schedule Adherence measures how consistently agents work the hours and tasks they were scheduled for, expressed as the percentage of scheduled time actually spent on planned activities. It is the primary workforce management metric for queue predictability — when agents are available when scheduled, wait times are stable and SLAs are achievable. Poor adherence is usually the first-order cause of unexpected queue spikes and SLA breaches.
Schedule Adherence = (Time spent on scheduled activities ÷ Total scheduled time) × 100
Scheduled activities include handling contacts, available/ready time, and scheduled training. Unscheduled breaks, late logins, and off-queue time reduce adherence. Do not conflate with occupancy — occupancy measures productive vs. idle time; adherence measures whether agents are present when the schedule says they should be.
B2B SaaS support teams with defined shifts
Calculate schedule adherence
- 1Using adherence as a punitive metric rather than a diagnostic one — root causes (unclear schedules, burnout, tooling issues) are worth fixing, not just measuring.
- 2Conflating schedule adherence with productivity — an agent can be 100% adherent and still handle contacts inefficiently.
- 3Setting rigid 100% targets — requiring perfect adherence creates compliance theater where agents skip breaks to hit the number.
- 4Ignoring team-level adherence drops — a systemic drop across the team indicates a shift structure or tooling problem, not individual performance issues.