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6 Key Call Center Metrics for E-commerce Business

6-Key-Call-Center-Metrics-for-E-commerce-Business

Call cen­ters are at the core of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and are often under con­stant scrutiny for ensuring high level of service. The top e-commerce players worldwide do not show high interest in displaying call center number on their homepage, nor do they rely on assisted sales. These are the types of business that rely only on their website to sell their products. Ecommerce business owners have always been looking for industry standards and benchmark to track their success. But Measuring and understanding call center metrics is a major challenge for them. Business models that require phone assistance for their customers should set up a clear procedure from the beginning to monitor call center metrics.

Let’s have a closer look at 6 key call center metrics that e-commerce business owners should care about.

The Cost of Customer acquisition– The Cost of Customer Acquisition is a critical metric for determining the growth and profitability of e-commerce business. It is the average amount of sales and marketing expenses you invest to acquire a single customer. Like any good, actionable metric, it’s comprised of smaller metrics that you can work on optimizing to improve your business. The fact is that customer acquisition costs can never be generalized as they keep on fluctuating depending on what the “transaction” or “action” definition is as well as on the size of the ticket being raised. Smart marketers use “Lifetime Customer Transaction Value” when acquiring a registered, paying customer online. E-commerce business needs to take into account the value that the customer is providing them throughout the lifetime, via repeat purchases.

Average Handle Time– E-commerce businesses frequently focus on augmenting their call center agent’s productivity. Call center agents should be well familiar with acronyms such as average handle time. The average handle time is the total amount of work hours related to calls. It involves the Average Talk Time and the Average After Call Work Time. No matter how good the team is at closing a deal on the phone, but it is important to track the after call work time because it will determine the workforce required. Average handle time should be less in E-commerce business for increasing customer satisfaction and decreasing churn rate. This can be done through CRM integration which will allow agents to have an instant access to information that they need while on call with the customer. This will reduce handle time as agents won’t have to dig deep for an answer to a tough question and will result in increased customer satisfaction as the caller won’t have to wait on hold while the agent does the digging.

First Call resolution– FCR is a measure of quality because it relies on the person’s skills to give all of the required information during the first call only and to convince customers to complete the purchase. The customer’s perception over the quality of a company’s services is highly influenced by his interaction with the call center. Regardless of the quality of the products and the website’s offers, the customer’s perception over the company’s brand is influenced by all of the factors that may appear during a completed purchase. FCR can be achieved by integrating e-commerce platform with call center software. Agents can track the pattern and behavior of customer interaction; they can also refer to the previous query and the kind of purchase or the transaction done by the customer. This will help in increasing accessibility, boosting sales and providing top-notch support to growing customer base. Agents should also be gauged with the necessary tools and techniques that will help them in driving continuous FCR improvement.

Customer Satisfaction Score– It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as “the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals. Measuring customer satisfaction is not an easy task, because of the difficulty to scale and measure attitudes, opinions and behaviors. The time invested into getting feedback from customers and analyzing their suggestions and complaints is more valuable than investing in online marketing campaigns meant to drive more traffic to the website. “Keeping an existing customer satisfied counts for 7 new acquired customers.” E-commerce business should focus on IVR-based post-call surveys wherein the caller is asked a series of questions related to the interaction and are asked to rate each question which leads to easy calculation of customer satisfaction degree.

Net Promoter Score– Net Promoter Score is a key metric for any e-commerce business because it has a direct impact on earning loyal customers and predicting customers’ behavior. This score reveals how many customers are willing to recommend a website/product to others.  A high Net Promoter Score is associated with a high Customer Satisfaction Index. This happens because, most of the time, a happy and satisfied customer will tell about their experience to others. Word of Mouth is a free, fast and trustworthy tool for promotion of services and products. Net promoter score can be increased by improving agent’s performance through Call Recording and Quality Management. E-commerce business should also plan to leverage the available 360° feedback tools to calculate Customer Loyalty scores—and drive the growth and profitability of their own businesses.

Service level– This metric is crucial for e-commerce business to deliver good customer experience as it is the percentage of calls answered within a specific period. It is important to monitor service level in real-time, as it provides an active barometer of call center’s current performance. It also helps in measuring how easily customers get into your contact center and how well you handle them so that it  lead to long-lasting customer satisfaction and loyalty. If service level is fluctuating, you need to resolve it immediately. Service level may be influenced by a range of issues, such as unexpectedly high call volume, unplanned service outages, or high agent absenteeism.

Managing an ecommerce business is a tough nut to crack. Regardless of the fact that the focus should go on the 20% of the business resources that drives 80% of sales, the company’s brand visibility is more valuable in the long run. Thus, make sure that you follow right metrics and every communication that your organization addresses is towards ensuring high level of services.

Which call center metrics do you follow to ensure that you are always ahead of your competitors? 

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