When a group of contact center professionals were recently asked by Jonty Pearce for the most important metrics that should be measured in a contact center, they came up with some interesting answers. Interestingly, most of the metrics they chose, focused on quality rather than efficiency.
Check out these top 9 contact center metrics according to these contact center professionals.
FCR or First Call Resolution
This metric is also referred to as “Best Contact Resolution”. It is a common metric in contact centers and measures how many times a customer had to call up the company for his or her problem resolution. It is a great technique to measure a problem from the perspective of the customers.
However, the real problem is that it is tough to measure this metric accurately and often becomes subjective in nature. For instance, a repeat call can be for a different issue altogether.
Some of the common ways of measuring this metric in contact centers are as follows:
- A third party measuring it by noting the response quality and positivity.
- Making use of an IVR survey post calls.
- Checking the number of the calling party within a specific period,
- Checking the total number of customers who called back within a week.
- Monitoring calls to find out the ability of agents to satisfactorily answer so that there is no call back from the caller.
Quality scores
It is one of the most important metrics used by contact centers. Quality scores give you the ability to monitor the overall experience of the caller and take a closer look at the conversation quality of agents while they are attending calls.
Scores on the calls can be given at a higher level for tracking the performance of the center and can be also done at the agent level. Ideally, these scores are measured between five to ten calls per agent on a month-by-month basis. But as the volume of work flow increases, the sample size for the calls start coming down.
Service level
It is one of the oldest metrics measured in a contact center. Service level is the percentage of customer calls that are responded to within a specific time period. The mean figure is somewhere between 80 percent of total call replied within 20 seconds and 95 percent of the total calls responded within 15 seconds.
Customer Satisfaction
This is a favorite metric in the contact centers and measures the percentage of happy customers. It is a simple metric and is easy to measure. Customer satisfaction can be measured through various methods. The most popular technique to do so is by using an IVR survey after calls are made or through a follow-up email survey.
RPC or Right Party Connects
It is a favorite metric with several dialer managers. RPC is an outbound metric measuring the ability to connect to the right entity. But since the number of answering machines is very high and with many customers rarely at their homes, it can be a tough metric to measure.
Revenue per call or revenue
It has been seen that most contact centers are typically used for customer service. So, it does not come as a surprise that revenue may often not be the top priority. However, the importance of this metric has increased tremendously in the present times with more and more call centers trying to be profit-driven centers.
Forecast accuracy
It is a metric that is high on the list for workforce planners who are trying to check the accuracy of the overall forecasts made by them. However, the metric is a tricky one. That is because the accuracy of the forecast is highly dependent upon several external factors such as the post, marketing, and call volumes.
Net Promoter Score
The metric has been successful in creating tremendous hype and measures the total number of people who would like to promote the company’s service or product to their friends or family members. The metric has been promoted as the one for predicting customer loyalty. Though it may appear similar to customer satisfaction in several ways, it takes a relatively more binary approach while measuring.
However, the metric is not as popular today as it used to be once. That’s because many contact centers that used it saw that results were good only initially. The metric is highly influenced by external factors such as pricing policy, overall banding and press news.
Average Handling Time
For several years, average handling time was one of the most popular metric in a contact center setup. It measures the total time taken by an agent to complete a call. It is a metric to measure the efficiency and includes factors such as wrap-up time, on-hold time and talk time.
However, it has come down on the list since it focuses just at the call efficiency and not at the call outcome. Many critics claim that the metric simply encourages the agent to wrap-up the call quickly rather than resolving their problems.