Brad :
I am a unit manager in a high volume call center. One of the biggest and most distracting parts of my job is taking escalation calls. I do track these calls so I know when the bulk of them happen but this is still unpredictible. Any advice on how to plan these chunks of focus time needed to use this system successfully?

Because of the nature of your job, these kinds of interruptions can’t be completely avoided. So it’s particularly important for you to carefully consider WHAT you’ll be doing during the times when you CAN focus for longer periods of time.

Since you can’t predict if you’ll be interrupted during a focus block, it’s important to set things up so that you can recover more easily after an interruption. One way to do that is to make sure that you know what you are working on in your block and what your next action is, so you can get back to it quickly.

Finally, I would still look at ways to reduce these escalation calls. You may not be able to avoid them completely, but see if there is a way you can still reduce them.

Maybe it involves setting up a system (FAQ, etc.) that people have to go through consistently before escalating the call and improving it over time based on their feedback.

I hope this helps.