Call Center Metrics

Every company having a web site has a menu called Contact us. And most companies have special hotlines. As a rule these are tool free number which you can dial should you have any questions about products and services offered by a company. And as a rule a pleasant female and rarely male voice welcomes you. But sometimes, this is where pleasant things end. If you happen to talk to incompetent call center operator he or she can drive you nuts. We all have watched funny records of how angry customers calling their contact centers. These are exceptions from the rules. As a rule customers and call center operators are being polite. However, if a call center operator fails to fully inform you on the issue you are interested in, or failed to solve your problem you will think twice before making a final decision to stay with the company or buy precuts.

Call center has own key performance indicators (KPI) that show how well call center is performing. So, in order to see how your call center is doing, we recommend use of Balanced Scorecard system. This software evaluated different KPIs which altogether make a full picture of a call center performance.

Contact scorecard system makes business evaluation effective

Evaluate your call center performance with contact scorecard system

In order to evaluate customer support service dialing a number and talking to an operator is not enough. Balanced Scorecard system will help you find and evaluate most important factors that make you call center effective.

With a Balanced Scorecard system you will be able to find weak points in the work of a call center. Sometimes, it seems that everything is OK. You operators professionally solve customers’ problems and answer their questions, but still the revenue is decreasing.

Balanced Scorecard system can do magic. Don’t believe it? Imagine how your employees will be motivated if they will be aware of own weak points? And what if you introduce a special system of bonuses for those who manage to improve a set of KPIs?

So, when using Balanced Scorecard, which KPIs are most important?

Firstly, this is revenue per successful call and cost per call. Any call center should bring profits (or if this is customer support service it should not be unprofitable). These call center metrics are considered most important and representative.

Of course, you need to take care of customer satisfaction, time on hold, blockage rate and rate of abandoned calls. With a Balanced Scorecard system this will be quite easy to do.

Are you familiar with the situation when you contact call center of a certain company and you cannot have your problem solved for 20 minutes? In other word, have you ever contacted a BAD call center? Believe it or not, this is a real challenge for a caller. There can be nothing worse than an incompetent call center operator who can only say “I understand your problem, let me see what I can do.” And that’s it. No solution at all. Eventually, you lose your temper, hang up and make a firm decision – never to deal with this company ever again.

This is a typical example of how companies lose customer, even the most loyal ones. Is call center of your company working OK? Test call center performance to find that out. Of course, you may call your own call center to see how your personnel work. But even if you hear pleasant voice and polite speech that does not means your customer support service has a perfect performance. There are many factors that have a strong influence on the work of a call center. You should know KPIs, i.e. key performance factors relevant to the call center business.

We recommend that you use Balanced Scorecard system to evaluate performance of a call center. Why would you need to do that? It is simple. You cannot work out any plans as to the further development without being aware of current problems and weak points. There may be some things to which you pay too much attention and spend too much money, but these things have very little impact on overall performance. Efficient fund allocation is a key challenge in business.

Test call center performance with Balanced Scorecard

Use Balanced Scorecard system to test call center performance

So, you need to know what should be improved in your call center. For example, if your have a very high cost per call rate, while some of your employees have much time in between the calls, it means that your personnel is too large. This is only a hypothetic example. With Balanced Scorecard system you will find the most important KPIs and their evaluation in percents.

For instance, if customer satisfaction has barely reached 50%, take urgent measures, as with such an attitude it will only decrease. If only 1 of 20 callers actually buys something, your conversion rate leaves much to be desired, and thus something needs to be done about it.

Business performance evaluation is perhaps one of the most important business processes. Net revenue is not the only indicator of how well you company is performing. Of course, making more profits is an ultimate goal of any company and net revenue is a very important indicator. But still, there are so many other factors and indicators showing how your business performs in the market.

Perhaps, you have noticed that almost all companies have own call centers and contract independent call center companies to work for them. Why would a company need a call center? In the modern age of telecommunication, ordering products or services by phone is a very common practice. Besides, potential customers often have questions about products and services, while current customers may have problems or concerns about purchased products/services.

Thus, call center is a linking element between customers and business. If this element fails to perform its core functions, the business is likely to have problems. The result of this may be decreased revenues and even losses.

To evaluate performance of your call center, you need to use specialized software that does all the hard work for you. Balanced Scorecard system is known as a reliable and trusted business performance evaluation system. This program will help you find strong and weak points in the work of a call center. Sure, you need to answer one question that may not seem easy for you: “Which service desk benchmark is most important for call center?” The answer is quite ambiguous. The reality is that there are several most important key performance indicators (KPI) having the most influence on business performance. Call center metrics includes KPIs directly related to calls, their cost, customers, employees and their attitudes.

Which service benchmark to choose? Use BSC to find answers

Service desk benchmarks

So, of you want to know weak points in the work of a call center you need to use Balanced Scorecard system and evaluate the following KPIs:

1. Customer satisfaction. Ask you customers to rate conversation with the call center operator. Were all questions answered? Did call center operator talked to you politely? Were you fully informed on the issue you have been interested in? Customer satisfaction has a direct impact on revenues and number of new customers.
2. Cost per call. If you are an ineffective manager who makes wrong decisions it may turn out that cost of one call may equal to the cost of a cheap product you sell. Try to analyze what factors influence cost per call, and what needs to be done to reduce it.

Sure, there are many more KPIs in call center metrics, which will be covere din the next articles on this blog.

In order to successfully run business, it should be properly managed. Business management is about identifying problems, setting development goals and evaluation of business performance over time. These days, business cannot work without IT support. In some businesses computers and the Internet are inseparable part of operation process, while other business types use IT technologies to serve business and evaluate it.

Automated tools for business evaluation are widely used ion many spheres. It is impossible to develop strategic plan without being aware of company’s current performance and existing problems. It is like building a house with an indecently built a basement. The higher the house will get, the shakier entire structure will be. This comparison vividly represents business development. Thus, in order to evaluate business, one should know which indicators of business performance represent real situation.

This article focuses on evaluation of key performance indicators in call centers. Many big companies have call centers or customer support services as a link to real and potential customers. Call center differ from other business models, as they have different goals. Often, the key goal of a call center is to generate sales. Some call centers consult customers and solve problems.

The goal of any business is making profits. If you call center works inefficiently, you will probably suffer losses because of sales rate decrease. Or your customers may simply find other company because they failed to receive competent answers to their questions.

Compare your call indicators to those of your competitors

Call indicators will help you evaluate overall performance of a call center

If you want to improve performance of your call center you need to know where you should start at. In other words, you need to evaluate certain KPIs. What are they in call center business?

1. Cost per call. This is, perhaps, the most important indicator, which represents overall performance of the call center. If you manage to keep cost per call low, it means that you managed to organize work in a very efficient way.
2. Customer satisfaction. Not matter what goals you call center pursues (sales, consulting etc.) customers should be satisfied with their calls. Unsatisfied customer will not buy from your company. And unsatisfied customer may refuse your services if your call center operators failed to solve his problem.
3. One and done call. This is a slangy expression meaning that customer solves his problem or has his question answered during one call. So, he does not have to call once again, which reduces number of unnecessary calls which reduces cot per call and increases revenue.