Call Center Metrics

What do you usually do if you are not satisfied with the quality of products and services? Yes, you dial number of a contact center to which calls are usually toll free. You naturally want to talk to representatives of companies that produced this product or rendered you particular services. You may know very little about the company and its approaches. You are not familiar with company policy and management strategy. In fact, you don’t care. Everything you are interested in is solving problems related to products and services.

For you, the person who answers the phone on that end, is a person who represents the entire company. This is the company’s face or, in case of call center, the “voice” of the company. If you have had an unpleasant experience with a particular call center you will not like the entire company. Why are we talking about this? It is to explain how important a call center is. Poor performance of a call center (customer support service) may result in poor performance of all company departments and overall performance of the company.

Evaluation of a call center performance is very important in financial terms. As said above low sales rate may be a direct consequence of a poor call center performance. If the products are not sold well or customers do not receive full information and support on the purchased products/services, your business may be in jeopardy.

Contact KPI shows performance of a call center

Use contact KPI to assess and improve business performance

Top managers from all over the world are actively using Balanced Scorecard system for business performance evaluation. This system evaluates separate key performance indicators (KPI) to provide you with the full picture of overall business performance. Each business has own KPIs, while call center managers need to focus on:

1. Cost per call. If your call center is unprofitable, then why does it work anyway? You need to observe the balance and keep cost per call at affordable level, so that your employees get decent compensation and your company does not suffer major losses. Think of the ways to reduce cost per call, and in several months you will see real results.
2. Revenue per successful call. If you call center sells products or services you need to make sure that you earn at each call as much as you can.
3. First resolution call. Such calls are called one and done. It means that a caller resolves hiw problems with just one call.

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.