Auxiliary Work State
Definition
Auxiliary Work State
Auxiliary work state is the time a contact centre agent stays signed in but off live calls, handling breaks, coaching, training, or offline admin. The routing engine marks the seat unavailable, and an aux code records why the agent stepped away from the queue.
Managers assign aux codes to label the reason: AUX 1 for lunch, AUX 2 for coaching, AUX 3 for a system outage. Without those codes, every non-call minute reads as idle time, and planners over-schedule to compensate.
Unmonitored aux inflates labour cost fast. A 2024 SQM Group benchmark put average agent occupancy at 60–70%, so up to 40% of paid time already sits outside live calls — and untagged, it is invisible.
Buyers feel it on the invoice. Seat pricing assumes an occupancy figure, so every untagged aux minute is a minute the client pays for and never gets in front of a customer.
Key takeaways
- Auxiliary work state covers every paid minute an agent is signed in but not on a live call.
- AUX codes label why the seat is unavailable, so shrinkage stays measurable shift by shift.
- Untagged aux distorts occupancy, inflates headcount forecasts, and quietly raises cost per call.
- Best-run BPOs hold total aux near 30–35% of paid time across break, coaching, and admin codes.
- Adherence, not raw aux volume, is the fair way to hold an agent accountable.
How it works
An agent signs into the automatic call distributor in an Available state. The moment they pick an aux code, the ACD stops routing calls to that seat, the workforce tool starts a shrinkage timer, and the dashboard changes colour.
Most platforms — Genesys Cloud, NICE CXone, Five9, and Avaya — ship a standard code set that admins can extend. A call center with three codes learns far less than one with twelve.
| AUX code | Label | Counts toward shrinkage? | Typical share of paid time |
|---|---|---|---|
| AUX 1 | Break or lunch | Yes (planned) | 12–15% |
| AUX 2 | Coaching or one-to-one | Yes (planned) | 3–5% |
| AUX 3 | Training | Yes (planned) | 4–6% |
| AUX 4 | System issue | Yes (unplanned) | 1–3% |
| AUX 5 | Offline admin | Partially | 3–5% |
| ACW | After-call work | No (counted separately) | 6–10% |
The split between aux and after-call work matters. ACW is wrap time tied to one interaction, so it rolls into average handle time. Aux sits outside any single call and rolls into shrinkage instead.
Code hygiene decides whether any of this works. If agents share one generic “other” code, the report tells you 20% of the day vanished without telling you where, and the next forecast inherits that blind spot.
Planners feed the labelled data into Erlang C staffing models. If yesterday’s real aux ran 32% against a 25% forecast, tomorrow’s roster needs roughly one extra seat per fifteen, a rule of thumb ICMI has published since 2019.
A daily shrinkage review runs in four steps:
- Pull the aux report by agent and by code for the previous 24 hours.
- Compare each bucket against the schedule the WFM tool built yesterday.
- Flag any variance above 5% for a team-lead conversation the same morning.
- Feed actual shrinkage, not forecast shrinkage, into tomorrow’s staffing curve.
Skip step four and the drift compounds. By Friday the roster is either underwater or paying for idle hours nobody planned.
Two metrics carry the consequence. Occupancy rate falls when aux climbs, and adherence records whether the agent took that aux at the minute the schedule said they could.
Examples
Aux discipline shows up differently in a 400-seat offshore campus and a 60-seat in-house team. These four cases, all dated 2023 or 2024, show what changed after operators tightened or widened their code taxonomy.
Manila BPO, financial services. A 400-seat outsourcer on Genesys Cloud for a US bank went from 3 aux codes to 12 in Q2 2024. The finer split exposed 6.8% of paid time parked in “system slow”.
That one line item funded a desktop refresh rather than a hiring round, and handle time fell with it.
US health insurer, in-house. A Blue Cross plan on Five9 caps non-ACW aux at 33% and flags any agent breaching it two days running. The rule cut unplanned aux by 18% in 2023 — with no drop in agent satisfaction.
Australian retailer, NICE CXone. Cotton On’s customer team splits aux across peak and off-peak schedules, so agents batch offline admin during the 2–4pm lull. Occupancy climbed from 71% to 78% across FY24 without adding a seat.
Peak-hour protection is the point: admin that lands at 3pm costs less than admin that lands at 9am.
Cebu campus, multi-client. A three-client operation uses per-client aux codes so ops can invoice coaching hours back to the line of business that triggered them. The client’s service level agreement rewards that audit trail.
The pattern repeats across all four. More codes plus a hard cap gives planners real numbers, and real numbers shrink the gap between the occupancy an outsourcing buyer pays for and the occupancy the floor delivers.
Related terms
Auxiliary work state sits inside a cluster of workforce-management metrics. Each of the terms below touches the same paid hour from a different angle, and mixing them up is the most common reporting error on a contact-centre floor.
- Shrinkage: total paid time an agent cannot take calls, of which auxiliary state is one slice.
- Occupancy Rate: the share of logged-in time an agent spends on live calls rather than waiting or in aux.
- Average Handle Time: mean duration of one call including talk and wrap, tracked apart from aux.
- Service Level Agreement: the contractual answer-speed target that unlabelled aux quietly threatens.
- Workforce Management: the forecasting and scheduling discipline that consumes aux data to size a roster.
- Call Center: the operational setting where auxiliary states are defined, coded, and enforced.
- Agent Turnover: the churn metric that rises when aux caps are set too tight and agents burn out.
FAQ
What is the difference between aux and ACW?
ACW, or after-call work, is post-call wrap time tied to one interaction and folds into average handle time. Aux covers non-call activity independent of any single call, such as coaching, breaks, and training, and rolls up into shrinkage.
How much auxiliary time is normal?
Best-run contact centres run 25–35% of paid time in aux, per SQM Group’s 2024 benchmark. Under 20% usually means agents are under-coached. Over 40% points to bloated schedules or an outage nobody has flagged.
Do agents get penalised for high aux?
Not for the total, for the reason. Sitting in coaching with a manager’s approval is fine; sitting in admin for two unscheduled hours is not. Adherence, not raw aux, is the accountability metric.
Can auxiliary states be automated?
Yes. Modern ACDs flip an agent into an outage code when a screen crashes, and bots can push agents into post-training aux the moment an LMS module completes. Automating the trigger removes the forgot-to-change-code tax.
Why does OA cover this metric?
Outsourcing contracts price seats on assumed occupancy, and aux is the biggest lever between the occupancy on paper and the occupancy on the floor.
Explore Outsource Accelerator’s outsourcing hubs to compare BPO partners by seat, spec, and shift before you sign an occupancy-based contract.
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