Call Center Metrics

At a first glance a call center has a very simple structure. Customers are calling and call center operators are answering calls. So simple! But in reality a call center is a complex organization with a number of factors that influence performance of the entire company. “What depends on call center performance?” you might ask. Well, the answer is quite clear. With an inefficient call center you will probably earn less money or even suffer losses.

Have you ever called a call center? Perhaps you have. Have you ever had a negative experience in dealing with call center operators? If you haven’t then you are lucky. There can be nothing worse than hearing “We understand your problems and let’s try to find solutions” while no solutions are available. After 5 minutes of a futile conversation, angry caller eventually hangs up with the decision never to deal with this company every again. Loss of existing or potential customers is loss of money.

So, in order to make sure your call center works in an effective and efficient way you need to regularly evaluate its performance. Balanced Scorecard is the best tool to perform business evaluation. This is specifically designed software that measures certain key performance indicators, i.e. values that fully represent company’s performance. Key performance indicators are different in different business types. It is also very important to pick the right indicators having true representative value.

Use call center scorecard to measure business performance

Call center scorecard is the best tool to eveluate call center performance

Call center managers need to pay attention to several KPIs (key performance indicators), depending on goals and tasks of call center operators. Let’s review performance evaluation of a sales call center and a customer support service.

Sales call center. There are two major goals – selling products/services and keeping customer satisfied. Call center operators should focus on revenue per successful call and customer satisfaction. The more money a call center earns the better business performance it has. Of course, such KPIs as time on hold and abandoned calls rate, are very important as well.

If we are talking about customer support services, operators of such a call center need to provide callers with support and assistance. In other words, they answer questions and look for solutions to existing problems. Tech support operators pay a special attention to one and done calls rate, blockage, time on hold, communication etiquette (especially with angry callers) and customer satisfaction.

Use of Balanced Scorecard system is recommended to call center managers and strategic planners who want to expand and further develop call centers.

What is the most important aspect in evaluation of business performance? First of all, evaluation process must be timely. In other words, business should be regularly evaluated in order to take counter measures to fight against problems and imperfections. Secondly, one should evaluate the most important indicators. If you are paying attention to the profits only, you may be ignorant on many other factors that directly or indirectly influence well-being of the business.

As known, a call center is an inseparable part of any big company that takes care of relationships with its customers. A company that values its customers and is willing to find new ones, always takes care of customer support and call center services.

As a part of a big business (usually customer support services do not earn money but consult callers on tech problems), a call center needs to be regularly evaluated. Evaluation process should not necessarily take much time and effort. In the age of IT technologies millions of managers from all over the world are using special automated performance evaluation system. Balanced Scorecard is one of the most popular of such systems. This software needs certain figures and values to measure performance of a company.

Major call center kpi

Evalution of call center KPIs is evaluation of call center business performance

In our case (a call center) Balanced Scorecard evaluates KPIs relevant to call center and customer support service. KPIs are key performance indicators, i.e. values that represent performance of a call center. In other words, these are figures that show how well a call center works.

It needs saying that there are primary and secondary call center kpi. Of course, everything depends on goals and tasks of a particular call center. For instance, if sales are the main goal, then revenue per successful call and conversion rate will be most the important KPIs which need to be measured as often as possible.

If we are talking about tech support or customer support service, then customer satisfaction is the main thing such a call center should focus on. Operators need to take care of such KPIs as cost per call, one and done calls rate (also called first resolution calls), average time on hold, abandoned calls rate etc.

In the first case a call center should do everything possible to keep expenses low and sales rate high. In the second case tech support need to do everything possible to keep customer satisfied, i.e. answer all questions and resolve all controversial issues.

Have you ever wondered what makes an efficient call center or customer support service? Is it only pleasant voice of an operators and politeness? Well, these are very important factors for customers. But the most important is the ability of a call center operator to solve customer’s problems and answer his/her questions. A customer will be only then satisfied when all his problems are resolved and questions answered.

From a managerial point of view a perfect call center is a call center that need not much money to be maintained or a call center that can generate sufficient profits (for example by selling products and services).

Support efficiency plays an important role in the work of any company or a service producer. If customers have no one to address with their problems or concerns such a customer will leave the company and find another business which will offer support and guidance.

Customer support efficiency

What makes customer support efficiency?

Taking into account the abovementioned facts, an effective manager should evaluate support efficiency from time to time. This sounds easy, but in practice this process can become very complex. If you call center earns enough money it does not mean that it works perfectly. You are to take into account numerous factors and indicators representing REAL performance of a customer support service.

What is the best way to evaluate performance of a call center? This is certainly Balanced Scorecard system. With this powerful tool any manager will be able to see how well his business is performing. Balanced Scorecard evaluates key performance indicators which are different in different business types. By evaluating, for instance, 5 KPI (key performance indicators) it is possible to have a full picture and be well informed on current and potential problems.

What are major KPIs in the work of a call center and support service? Sure, everything depends on the goals. If a call center aims at selling products and services then revenue per successful call will be a NUMBER ONE indicator.

In case of a customer support service, operators need to concentrate on customer satisfaction, abandoned calls rate, time on hold, blockage, cost per call and a number of other KPIs. Balanced Scorecard will provide users with evaluation results in forms of graphs, figures and percents. If you regularly use this system it is possible to track change dynamics and analyze trends, which in its turn can help develop strategic plans.