Call Center Metrics

To ensure the productivity of helpdesk in call centers, there are actually a lot of certain helpdesk management tips that you can consider.

The helpdesk actually exists to provide much needed assistance in the overall operations of call centers. When you are in the business of call centers, there are actually two sets of customers that you need to consider, which are the internal and the external customers. If only the budget would allow, then all needs brought about by these customers can be answered to right away. Unfortunately, such is not the case, so there should be some sort of balance to be set when it comes to helpdesk management.

The first of many helpdesk management tips is the auditing of the center’s current practices. It is important to do this before you do engage in certain changes for your processes, as needed. Each and every detail should be audited. However, you should pay attention to customer care and other support services offered by your helpdesk.

The second is to develop what is known as service level management. This is done by clearly outlining what the different services that your helpdesk offers. IT provisions should also be monitored, since there would inevitably be broader requirements when it comes to handling the business. Once this service level management is established, then things should flow more smoothly.

The third step is to reevaluate costs entailed. The total costs in providing these services should be pegged, first and foremost. After such a figure is established, then you should proceed to determine just how much each and every call received and made costs, as well as the costs each call entails in order for particular issues to be resolved. Identify which calls are easily resolved because these are actually the ones that are cheaper. These are the calls that do not generate that much income for your helpdesk. This does not mean it would be better to have calls on problems and issues that are harder to resolve, just because these generate more income. Rather, effective helpdesk management would do whatever it takes to provide self-help tips, so that clients would no longer have to contact customer service representatives just to solve trivial problems, say, resetting passwords for instance.

The fourth step is to make sure you have exactly the right mix when it comes to hiring the people for the job. Techies may have the needed expertise to handle difficult calls, but they just might not have the necessary customer service skills needed in handling the call itself. Similarly, customer-savvy representatives may be too lax when handling difficult calls. Thus, the perfect mix should be achieved here. It is actually better to get customer-savvy representatives than to get techies. This is because technical skills can be easily taught and learned, whereas interpersonal and communication skills are inherent.

Lastly, you should demand quality support from your suppliers. This is in accordance to your rights to high-end support, so do not worry about appearing demanding. Technical evaluations should be made from time to time, so that you can be sure that your call center would be as efficient as it should be. Returns of investment would then be made more smoothly if you keep in mind these helpdesk management tips.

There are certain helpdesk efficiency secrets that can be used in ensuring the overall performance of helpdesks all over the world. Customer satisfaction is the underlying concept in these secrets.

The advent of technology brings about so many advantages and benefits that are resting on the palms of our hands. But not everything brought about by such technologies are positive. There are certain technical problems and issues that gizmos and gadgets just cannot do without. And this does not pertain to just gizmos and gadgets alone! There are so many services that warrant a call or two to helpdesks, just for technical support or assistance. Thus, in order for helpdesk agents to provide the quality service their customers are entitled to, then a certain level of efficiency should be achieved on their part as well. And this is where the importance of knowing certain helpdesk efficiency secrets sets in.

When you are discussing helpdesk efficiency, then you should keep in mind the underlying concept of customer satisfaction. This is the primary aim of all helpdesk agents. Now, there are certain things that can help any helpdesk agent in ensuring customer satisfaction. One of these is the establishment of a scorecard. This scorecard actually helps in quantifying aspects that determine helpdesk performance. Here lies the concepts that have been used for some time now, and these are the number of calls answered, as well as the length of the calls that have been answered. The basic premise here is the more calls the agent receives, then the more people he is able to help. To be able to entertain more calls, then the handling time for each call should also be as short as possible. This is the quantitative side in helpdesk performance.

There is also a qualitative side that you just cannot do without. The number and length of calls are not enough to ensure customer satisfaction. In fact, customers do not really care how long their calls would be, so as long as the issue or the problem is resolved. Thus, this should also be included in the equation, to ensure helpdesk efficiency.

For these to be strongly implemented, then the needs of your customers should be evaluated and outlined as clearly as possible. This way, you can easily determine the benchmarks needed in the whole process. The ability to foresee the needs of your customers is vital here. As helpdesk agents, you should know the features of the products you are handling inside and out, so that you will have a glimpse of the possible glitches and complaints your customers might have. You also have to remember that not all of your customers have the technical knowledge that is needed in operating your products efficiently. As helpdesk agents, you have to be patient when handling these matters. Remember that your job is to satisfy each and every customer. Keep this in mind, especially during the times when handling calls becomes difficult.

Lastly, the proficiency and productivity of helpdesk agents should be plotted on the scorecard as well. You have to make sure that the helpdesk agents you hire are as productive as they come. This way, customer satisfaction is easier to achieve. Thus, you should monitor the performance of each of your agents. You should check the call abandon rates of your agents for this aspect. Call abandon here actually means that the agent himself did not bother to take a call that has been routed to his line. This is a strong indication of irresponsibility. Thus, helpdesk agents with high call abandon rates should be constantly monitored.

Leading the customer service team to attaining a commendable customer service performance is full of challenges. There are several simple ways on how this could be achieved.

There is always a heavy demand for a good customer service performance. On the business front, a reliable customer service unit is one of the main factors that help bring about a healthy revenue flow to the company. When there is an excellent customer service, it is logical that there would be a sustained volume of loyal patrons and customers. In the end, this would lead to higher sales and a steady flow of income for the company.

If as a manager, you are aiming for a high customer service performance, experts advice that you target providing an extraordinary service to customers. Clients are sources of income for your unit so make sure they are well served and well treated by your team. Here are seven of the most effective tips that would help you guide the customer service team towards a better and more sustained performance.

1. Be extraordinary. Your team might have different ideas and concepts of being extraordinary. It would be better if you would set a standard concept for the word and be clear that the concept set for the team is only applicable to team efforts. This way, everyone would agree to one standard definition for the word and eventually have a consensus of how being extraordinary could be applied to real life situations particularly in the customer service operations.

2. Allow team members to approach you when they are not sure about any provision regarding the customer service operations. Because of this, make your self highly approachable and accessible most of the time. That means, you should always be around especially during occasions when problems arise.

3. Motivate the team to be extraordinary. To do that, orient and brief the team to further and more clearly understand what there is to understand. This way, they would be better equipped into do better in what they do. As a manager, you should also respect individuality and allow each team members to retain their individuality. Advocate sincerity, as it would help better establish rapport between customer service representatives and clients.

4. Share helpful information. If you have encountered new knowledge that may be of great help to operations, immediately share this to everyone in the team. Doing so would help you ensure that everyone is well informed. Eventually, this would translate to better customer service.

5. Share commitment. As a manager, of course, you are expected to be highly committed to your job. You are an effective manager if you would be able to make your team as committed as you are. Motivate the team to reach goals and targets and improve the unit’s overall performance.

6. Be patient. Significant increases in sales do not happen overnight. Be patient to wait for sometime until target results and outcomes are met.

7. Be prepared for challenges and react to such setbacks accordingly. Who says attaining high levels of customer service performance is that easy? A team would succeed on collective efforts aside from having a highly effective manager that handles the team.

AKS-Labs has released a new version of Balanced Scorecard Designer, it is now supports very flexible report generation function, giving scorecard owner great information represented as an html file.

The program support 3 types of report - Advanced, Standard, Mini. The most detailed is advanced report. The report can be generated for a period of time and will show the dynamic of performance within scorecard from date to date.

The dynamic will be represented as a data tables and graphs. The information will be generated for all categories and indicators. Navigation between various data parts is as easy as a single click.

Read more at official web-site of Balanced Scorecard Designer.

Identifying the metrics or key performance indicators (KPI) that really matters is crucial for managers to measure call center performance.  These metrics should not be entirely agent-centric. Rather, customer satisfaction and loyalty should also be taken into account.

Many experts now consider the important role that key performance indicators (KPIs) play in measuring call center performance. Along with this, they recognize the need to narrow down KPIs to the metrics that really matters.

Traditionally, performance management systems in call centers used to really on simple measurements like handling times, talk times, wrap times, and idle times as the primary criteria for evaluating agent efficiency. With certain technologies like predictive dialers and automatic call distribution (ACD) systems, it was very easy to access, compile and interpret data on agent-centric efficiency metrics that have been mentioned previously.

While these information do provide call center managers accurate information about how their agents perform, they do not necessarily dwell on overall customer experience. Likewise, these efficiency measures do not take into account the performance of a call center in line with its corporate goals.

The emergence of new technologies that enable call centers to obtain customer interaction analysis has benefited call center managers by enabling them to run their usual operations and at the same time, determine how the entire organization vis a vis their corporate goals. Unlike traditional call center efficiency reports, these new technologies focus on improving the overall productivity of call centers in conjunction with improving customer satisfaction ratings.

Call center management are faced with the dilemma of balancing productivity goals of the entire organization and the improvement of call center customer experience.  Managers, more often than not, hire additional agents especially during peak times when frequency of inbound calls is expected to rise. At the same time, they can not hire as many agents as they want because agent salaries account for almost 70% of call center expenses.

Along with this balancing dilemma, it is also a challenge for call center managers not to rely more on agent-centric measurements as indicators of success. Doing so tends to disregard other KPIs such as customer satisfaction and loyalty which should have been considered as primary critical success factors. Experts on call centers, upon thorough analysis, now find the need for call center managers to identify metrics that will help them identify which among the agents are able to meet quantitative goals at the same time, provide top-notch customer service.

By obtaining data on talk time and first call resolution (FCR), it becomes easier to identify which among the agents excel in solving customer problems within the least amount of time.

Most call center technologies can easily provide information of up to 25 metrics at a time. While these can be used as indicators of agent and call center efficiency, experts recommend that only 5 metrics ideally measures overall call center performance. These five KPIs are cost per call, customer satisfaction, first contact resolution (FCR) rate, agent utilization and aggregate call performance. These metrics are based on the Pareto or 80/20 principle which states that from these 5 indicators, 80% of performance measurement and call center management values is obtained. These success factors, likewise, determine the Balanced Score of a call center which quantifies the aggregate efficiency of a call center over time.

Your task as a call center manager is to make sure call center performance is high as revenue would depend on it. There are several ways on how you can ensure this.

Managing a call center business is never an easy task. There is always pressure because there is an evident and abrupt need to monitor performance. Of all the types of businesses, call centers are different because operations heavily rely on the quality of call services the personnel are providing, In other words, call centers are different in that revenues rely on how persuasive and effective the staff are in handling telephone calls and marketing products and services via the telephone.

As a call center manager, your challenge is how to manage a pool of people who are of different personalities and demographics. There is a need to guide and manage these people accordingly and effectively as to ensure their performances are great and yielding to productive results. Here are several practical guidelines that are designed to help call center managers bolster call center performance.

1. Choose the best and most reliable personnel for the job. With this recommendation is the reminder that good call center management starts the moment you hire staff for your business. Hiring the right people is imperative because the business would heavily rely on them. Choose people who are good at carrying conversations, adept in the industry and very much motivated to work within a team.

2. Before allowing the hired personnel to go live or conduct call transactions, make sure they are properly and adequately trained. This is the reason why it is a requirement that any call center company should conduct and sponsor a special training program for its newly hired personnel. Be careful and be strategic when developing, designing and devising such training efforts. Make sure the series of seminars to be held would touch on key issues and concerns regarding overall attitude, listening skills, scripting, conversing, politeness, patience, persuasion, referral and effective speaking practices.

3. Call center operations basically run scripts. There should be a standard flow of conversation. Usually, a protocol or script is provided to personnel to guide them on how to handle a call or a conversation. When writing that script, be particularly attentive and open minded to know which lines would be polite, convincing and noteworthy.

4. Establish a good and effective system in monitoring team performance regularly. It would be advisable if you would be able to monitor how the team is faring on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Doing so would help you immediately find out if there would be modifications needed for the flow or if your people are doing what is appropriate. Adopting a good call center performance metrics for personnel would also be of great help since there is a need to monitor the performance of each of the team members.

5. Build enthusiasm in the workplace. As much as possible, do not pressure the team to do good. Let them enjoy the workplace so that they would be more enthusiastic in reaching targets and goals. As a manager, you could do a lot in ensuing that the workplace turns really conducive for a pleasurable work.

If you are able to follow such tips, expect that in no time, call center performance would be significantly boosted in no time.

For a call center to determine just how efficient it is at its chosen field, call center metrics should then be developed.

You just cannot discount the fact that call centers today are amongst the most successful businesses all over the world. And it is because of this fact alone that has caught the attention of many investors worldwide. Now, you just might be one of the many aspiring entrepreneurs who are considering delving into the call center business. But seriously, operating and manning a call center is not as easy as it may seem. By looking at the huge call centers that are operating today, you cannot help but wonder just what do they have? What is that certain gusto behind their success? If there is something that successful call centers have in common, aside from the superb quality they get from the agents that they hire, it is metrics. Yes, call center metrics.

In fact, no call center can ever do without call center metrics. This is because these are the metrics, the indicators themselves, which show you in quantifiable terms just how good, or bad, your call center is performing at the moment. If you own a call center, and you ask yourself how your center is doing, just how can you answer that question? Do you refer to the yearly revenue your call center is garnering? Would that answer your question satisfactorily? With the many aspects underlying the success of call centers, revenue alone does not really answer the question. This is why call center metrics are very much needed in the setting.

So, in developing call center metrics, you have to consider the need to develop KPI’s, or key performance indicators. These are the indicators of performance that you need to place into the context of your call center, the markers, to be more specific. Bear in mind that there is actually a need to keep the number of metrics to be used at a moderate amount. If you use too many metrics, then too much time and effort would be exerted in analyzing performance. When you use too few metrics, then the evaluation would be too broad as well. In the call center setting, it is actually recommended to use just 5 metrics. The commonly used ones include: Customer Satisfaction, Call Cost, First Call Resolution, Agent Efficiency, and Overall Call Center Performance.

In developing call center metrics, you will surely notice how some of the metrics are related to other metrics. For instance, customer satisfaction is related to first call resolution, as well as call quality. So, what constitutes customer satisfaction, to be exact? Let us then look at first call resolution and call quality as individual metrics. If you were the customer, what determines call quality for you? Wouldn’t it be first call resolution? If the agent is unable to resolve the issue you are calling about in his first attempt, then this would not spell out that much quality for you. Thus, first call resolution constitutes a bigger part of customer satisfaction, when compared to call quality.

There is indeed a need to be as organized as possible when developing call center metrics. This way, you are sure to have an objective perspective when choosing which metrics to use and plot on your scorecard. With the scorecard in tow, you can then proceed to measure just how efficient and successful your call center is when it comes to performance.

Measuring Helpdesk performance can ensure customer satisfaction, which is the primary goal in the business. With a properly established system, monitoring customer satisfaction would be easier as well.

The world of technology brings us many, many benefits that all of us can enjoy. However, with such benefits, there are also a number of technical issues that one just cannot do without. This is because, as high-tech as these gadgets may be, there will indeed come a time when you would need technical support for whatever glitches the features may have.

And with this comes the importance of Helpdesk. Simply put, Helpdesk refers to the mediators that make the features of fads and gadgets easier for their users. Customer satisfaction is the underlying concept Helpdesks aim for. Because of this, it is of such importance to measure Helpdesk performance as well.

Since the basic aim of Helpdesks is providing customer satisfaction, then one of their aims should also be to be as effective at their jobs as possible. For this purpose, a scorecard should then be developed to quantify Helpdesk performance. Ever since the concept of Helpdesk surfaced, there have been two aspects used for this: the number of answers called, and the length of these calls.

The less time Helpdesk agents spend resolving the issue for each caller, the better. The concept here is not just, “The more, the merrier”, but “The more, the better.” If a Helpdesk agent would spend less time for each call, then he or she would be able to handle more calls. Thus, it is very important to keep track of the number of calls answered and the length of these calls.

However, Helpdesk performance should not be measured by just using quantity as basis. Quality should be measured as well. With just quantity as basis, there would be a quota to hit for every Helpdesk agent, of course. It would be very easy to lose track of the concept of customer satisfaction here, especially if you would focus your attention on just getting as many calls as possible. Quality should still be meshed in the equation.

By including customer satisfaction in your scorecard, determining the benchmarks in the evaluation of the needs of customers would be so much easier. It is very important to be able to foresee the needs of your customers, especially when it comes to the features and such of your products. You have to bear in mind that not all customers would have the technical knowledge that you have about the products. Of course, there are those customers who are techie in nature.

These are the people who make the job of Helpdesks easier. Still, there are those who are not familiar with the technology products come with. These are the people who would need guidance from the beginning to the end of the call. This takes patience and effort on the part of Helpdesk agents.

The proficiency of Helpdesk agents should also be included on the scorecard. One way to do this is to monitor the call abandon rates of the agents. High call abandon rates would strongly imply that the agent is not entertaining the customers that have rung his or her line. The figures for this aspect are one effective way of measuring Helpdesk performance. Agents with high call abandon rates can indeed be pegged as inefficient at the job. Monitoring Helpdesk performance this way can help any business deal with such employees accordingly.

In the new version of Balanced Scorecard Designer you will find time-points feature. What does it mean?

Say, you have performance values for today, but what about past and future? What about next week or next month? The new version of Balanced Scorecard designer will provide you with clear and easy to use interface to specify indicators settings and values for any date.More over the mechanism of inheritance is available, so if you want to change something you don’t need to make changes for every date, you can just change the date when the change was made and it will be applied to all indicators in future.

While you move through the time, your indicators (goals) will remain the same, they are “invariant”, as well as descriptions and some other texts. But there are also some important time-depended values, such as indicator weight, current score, min and max scores.

If summarize all features in simple words then there is a good example of what program now can do:

Imagine, you have indicators “Cast of the call”. Today, when you start your customer service unit, you can measure it on the scale [5..10]$ and give an important relative weight to this indicators, say, 8. But tomorrow, you may change your scale, relative weight and your score.

Also, with new version you can define your own custom measure units:

For call center user can specify necessary measure units, such as call/hour or $/call or anything else. Once created the new measure unit can be exported or imported in other project.

Learn more about Balanced Scorecard Designer.

Balanced Scorecard Designer: Buy Now | Download trial version.

Agent and call center efficiency should be measured based on crucial customer service KPI as these indicators will help evaluate the performance of both agents and call centers vis a vis company goals.  

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are measurements that can be quantified. These critical success factors vary depending on the nature of an organization. In the case of call centers, customer service KPIs are crucial indicators of overall call center performance.

It is undeniable that many call center managers are unaware about the crucial role that KPIs play in the management of call centers. Instead, they focus more on agent statistics such as average speed of answer and abandonment rate which industry experts consider as unimportant metrics. In contrast, KPIs are given importance for their ability to monitor and predict performance as well as identify, diagnose and resolve call center performance problems.

The average customer service call center employ technologies that can give them information access to more than 25 metrics. While these can assist managers in evaluating agent performance and utilization, some of these are unnecessary that they need to be narrowed down to those metrics that really matter. Call center experts identify five metrics that they consider most important. These metrics include cost per call, customer satisfaction, first contact resolution (FCR) rate, agent utilization and aggregate call center performance.

Cost and quality should be among the essential metrics as call centers exist to provide the best quality services at the lowest possible cost. In call centers, the most important cost metric is cost per contact. On the other hand, the best metric for quality of services is customer satisfaction. This explains why cost per call and customer satisfaction are two of the metrics included in the five essential call center KPIs as identified by experts.

First contact resolution (FCR) or the number of contact resolved during the initial contact with customer, is another metric that should be given importance as statistics show that call centers with low FCR rates also had low customer satisfaction ratings. While customer satisfaction could also be influenced by other variables such as Average Speed of Answer (ASA), and Handle Time, FCR is considered to be the single biggest driver of customer satisfaction. Agent utilization is also among the essential KPIs of call centers as it is the best measure of labor efficiency. Cost per call is decreased if agent utilization is high. Salaries and incentives of call center agents comprise more than half of call center expenses.

Reducing call per cost is the only leverage available to call centers to counter the effects of labor costs. Agent utilization, however, should not be kept at extremely high rates as this may result to employee burn out which in turn, leads to turnover. Lastly, aggregate call center performance is an essential metric as this is an indicator if the call center is improving or declining in terms of performance. The Balanced Score is established as the single score that measures the overall performance of a call center. This metric, when monitored over a period of time, will show stakeholders exactly how the company is doing.

There are other common metrics that were not included in the list of essential 5 customer service KPIs like call abandonment rate and average speed of call. While these can measure agent efficiency, they are less important and less effective as critical success factors.