Live Time, Wrap Time and Idle Time

The employees who remained after the restructuring of the bank did two types of tasks. One was to answer phone calls from customers, the other to process other matters. Work was organized in teams with team leaders appointed by managers higher up in the hierarchy. The team members had to work the phone lines for two 2-hour periods a day, but they were also expected to step in if the call backlog became too long. The direct contact with the customer was called ‘live time’ and could not be longer than 20 seconds per call. If the employee had to check out the answers to questions, then they would have to make a note and finish the call. The time it took to make the note was known as the ‘wrap time’ and they could not deal with queries until after their phone session. The live time had to be maximized and was the measurement of productivity. Time spent visiting the toilet or having a coffee-break was not, as one might think, called dead time but instead ‘idle time’. At present, the bank was trying to diminish the wrap time because it reduced productivity. The measurement of productivity had nothing to do with the quality of the service but was purely quantitative: the time an employee spent answering calls divided by the number of incoming calls.