Call center: not just a bunch of people answering phonecalls
A call center is not just a bunch of people who answer customers’ calls. This is a very important business unit that has certain functions in the company. Moreover, a call center or customer support service in really part of a company strategic plan. This article will focus on how a call canter/helpdesk contributes to implementation of strategic goals.
Interrelation of call center KPIs
At a first glance a call center is a department in which call center operators just answer customers’ calls. Some business owners do not think a call center is necessary. This is a deadly mistake. It should be mentioned that it is call center operators who also form company business image. For instance, you have purchased a new cell phone and have problems in adjusting settings. No video tutorials online really helped, so your last hope. So, you call a hotline number and are greeted with a pleasant voice: “How may I help you.” From this moment you start forming your judgment about a brand. You hope that the call center operator will surely answer all of your questions and you will have no need to call again. If for some reasons you fail to receive competent answers, you will probably never buy this brand again. Of course, this is only a hypothetic example, however, it show how a call center operators can turn a new customer into a regular one and vice versa.
Why is a call center important?
This example takes us to the second point – importance of continuous performance evaluation and strategic planning in a call center. Without any doubts, Balanced Scorecard is the simplest but at the same time most effective tool that can be used both on a company level and in the individual departments like customer support or a call center.
A call center BSC will be certainly customer oriented. However, all other BSC categories (financial, internal business processes, learning and growth) have also exceptional importance as all KPIs (key performance indicators) are interrelated. Thus, in order to achieve high customer satisfaction degree, call center operators need to master new skills and get new knowledge.
Among the most important BSC KPIs we can certainly mention such indicators as cost per call, average time per one customer call, time in line, fist resolution calls rate (when a caller has no need to make a repeated call, which means that all his questions were answered), customer satisfaction, sales offers per call and others.
