Call Center Metrics

Call centers have become extremely popular in our society nowadays. This is because lots of businesses consider it important to provide their customers with centralized servicing and round-the-clock support. A call center is frequently nothing more than just an office, where agents receive incoming calls from the company’s clients or make corresponding outbound calls. They typically employ dozens of people in order to be able to meet all customers’ requirements.   Therefore their managers realize the importance of implementing call center metrics. However, they frequently face difficulties when it comes to the very process of their selection and tracking. This is because they do not know what to start with and how to encourage employees to contribute to successful call center performance.

Importance of excellent call center performance

If you are really concerned with effective improvement of your company, then you should definitely start with finding proper call center metrics to implement. The fact is that this task may be quite challenging simply because there are a lot of them these days and they all have particular benefits. However, you should know that not all metrics you may find will be right for your call center. Consequently, it is you who have to define what metrics exactly you would like to set up for your particular business with regard to its specialization, specific problems (if any) and current success. You should also pay special attention to those metrics, which can effectively satisfy the needs of your customers.

Indicative KPIs for call center

Now, let us proceed to the analysis of the most popular call center metrics, such as the average handle time, first call resolution rate, average answer speed, the approximate amount of talk time an agent needs to handle the call successfully, customer satisfaction etc. All of them are interrelated and may affect each other in different ways.  For example, if your employees will do their best effort to improve the average handle time only, this may have a negative impact upon the quality of incoming calls they receive. This is because they may fail to answer the callers’ questions or solve their problems properly. As a result, this will decrease both the rate of first call resolution and the level of customer satisfaction, thus affecting the company’s reputation.  As you see, it is of vital importance to consider not only quantity metrics, but those that are related to the quality of servicing as well. If you manage to cope with these tasks successfully, the performance of your company will be undoubtedly improved.

The Balanced Scorecard system is widely implemented in lots of countries across the globe nowadays. Its main objective is to help the owners of companies identify whether their businesses are running effectively or not and make corresponding changes if necessary. Actually, this tool involves numerous metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) you may apply in order to measure the performance of your business and define what factors exactly may prove to be critical for it. That is why there is no sense in implementing all the metrics you manage to come across. Some of them may simply be unnecessary, which will be just a waste of your time and money.  Instead, you are highly recommended to analyze the most popular and effective KPIs, which involve the average time of call response,  the punctuality and productivity of workforce, the level of customer satisfaction, effectiveness and speed of successful call handling, the approximate amount of time a customer is on hold waiting for his/her call to be answered etc. These are the most typical call center metrics, which may help you analyze whether its performance corresponds to your demands and expectation or not. The final purpose of implementing these metrics is to identify what factors require immediate enhancement for the benefit of your business.

Call center evaluation cycle

Why are the above mentioned call center metrics of key importance in telemarketing industry?  The fact is that it would be not easy to manage, control and analyze all information related to any call center and draw corresponding conclusions without them. This is because trustworthy organizations of this type are typically large and involve dozens of agents that stick to the single program. It means that they handle hundreds (if not thousands) of incoming calls every day, which makes it nearly impossible to identify those factors that may have a negative impact upon the overall call center performance. This is what these standard metrics are generally used for. For example, if you manage to identify how well your employees are trained, you will be more likely to decide whether there is a necessity to implement any coaching techniques or not. This is how you will make your team more productive, thus helping them handle more calls successfully. It will eventually result in the reduction of the company’s expenses. Other call center metrics may help you achieve all your business objectives as well. Keep in mind that it is you who are responsible for the efficient call center management. So, leave your doubts behind and make use of the most beneficial call center metrics.

Major KPIs for call centers

Everyone will agree on the fact that call centers are gaining immense popularity nowadays. More and more people use their services when they look for quality products or need to have their problems solved on time. No wonder, the increasing number of business owners consider it profitable to provide their customers with call center services, which can satisfy their particular needs, thus affecting the popularity and reputation of their companies. The only problem they frequently face is inability to evaluate the quality of servicing in a proper way. If you are concerned with this issue as well, then you should undoubtedly learn more about the Balanced Scorecard system and benefits it may offer you.

Call center kpi opposites

At present, there is no doubt about the fact that call centers may affect the performance of any company in different ways. It depends upon how productive their work really is. For example, if call center agents are well-trained and can find an individual approach to each client, this will increase the amount of successfully handled calls and the level of customer satisfaction in particular. On the other hand, clients will not appreciate it if the employees will not be able to provide them with the expected level of servicing simply because they lack communicative skills. These are only a few aspects that may have a serious impact upon the reputability of your business. If you do not wish to avoid problems of this type, you should think about making use of a highly useful tool known as call center BSC.

Call center bsc

So, how is it better to measure the performance of a call center with the help of this system? As far as there are numerous customer support organizations that function on behalf of various companies, the process of evaluating their effectiveness may differ as well. The fact is that each organization may implement different metrics with regard to its particular needs and problems. That is why call center BSC is rightfully believed to offer universal metrics that will be relevant for any company. These measures generally involve average talk time (ATT), service level (SL), average call handling time, percentage of resolved and unresolved problems, amount of incoming calls successfully handled by call center agents per hour, level of customer satisfaction and amount of time that customers have to spend on hold when waiting for their calls to be taken. If you manage to pay attention to all these aspects, it will be much easier for you to define which of them needs enhancement and undertake special measures to improve the situation. Consequently, you will have more chances to boost your business and win your customers’ trust.

Are you the owner of any kind of business? If so, then you definitely aim at satisfying the needs of your customers. Actually, there is nothing surprising about that, since the number of clients substantially affects the popularity and profitability of any company. So, what is the best way to be sure that your customers are satisfied with the level of servicing you are ready to offer them at the moment? The answer to this question seems to be quite easy at the first sight: you just have to make sure that your services or products correspond to their demands and requirements. The truth is, however, that lots of business owners face problems when it comes to accomplishing this task. Fortunately, there is something you can do to improve the situation. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is what you really need. Let us find out more about this tool and ways of its implementation.

The process of implementing BSC

The Balanced Scorecard helps business owners evaluate the effectiveness of their companies and identify those factors, which need immediate improvement. In other words, this tool may give you an idea of what is going on in your company and whether there is something you can do in order to change the situation for the better. No wonder, this system is frequently used in customer oriented call centers, since their basic objectives are to meet the expectations of their clients, generate high amount of sales and do everything to help people solve their problems as quickly as possible. It is quite understandable that if callers get what they are looking for, they will be more likely to deal with your company once again.

4 BSC perspectives

So, what does call center BSC involve? It uses four main perspectives in order to help you achieve all the missions you have set for your business. These perspectives include learning and professional growth, customer satisfaction, cost and profits and basic client-oriented processes. Each of these points, in its turn, incorporates a number of aspects, which are closely related to it. For example, when we talk about cost and profits, you will probably like to include the following points to this perspective: the cost of each separate outbound call, the revenue you will get in case the call you have made proves to be successful and, of course, the so-called “conversion rate”.

The same is about all other kinds of perspective mentioned above. Thus, learning and professional growth may involve coaching and educational trainings implemented by call center managers. Client-oriented processes, meanwhile, will incorporate call handling issues and business progress associated with them. Finally, customer satisfaction metric will imply the quality of outbound calls. As you see, all 4 perspectives are highly important for any call center and if you manage to combine all of them successfully, you will be able to evaluate the performance of your company in the most effective way.

What is one of the most effective ways to evaluate the performance of a call center? The answer to the suggested question is as follows: successful implementation of the balanced scorecard system will help you analyze the work of your company and measure the productivity of your workforce in the best way.

Metrics evaluation cycle

The main task of any call canter is to provide fruitful interaction between businesses (banks, computer hardware companies, utility organizations etc.) and their customers. At present, we may differentiate between two main types of call centers – those that receive incoming calls from people who need to have their problems solved, and those that make outbound calls to the company’s prospects.

Call center managers who wish to ensure its effective performance, need to find a proper balance between the level of servicing and cost-effectiveness of the process. As a rule, customers do not wish to be on hold for a long period of time waiting for their calls to be answered. Therefore, the number of call center agents should ideally correspond to the amount of calls they can manage during a working day. It is easy to assume that a low amount of employees will result in the reduction of their productivity, while the excessive number of call center agents will lead to the increased expenditures. Therefore, managers of these organizations should be primarily concerned with looking for reasonable ways out of this situation.

Major call center KPIs

Generally, call centers apply diverse forecasting methods to define the approximate number of employees needed for a specified time interval. Such techniques are primarily used to define the intensity and duration of call traffic at any particular hour. This is where they face serious complications, because the amount of calls may range according to the time of the day and even the season. The most effective solution in this respect is to analyze previous data.

As far as call center managers are initially concerned with the level of customer satisfaction, they tend to foresee the behavior of their potential clients. They realize that if their customers have to wait for an agent’s response during a long period of time, they will be more likely to use the services of another call center next time. Therefore, they consider it important to implement performance evaluation systems, which will help them measure such metrics as average handling time, the amount of calls handled during an hour, average talk time, cost per one call, the approximate time of delay, rate of first call resolution etc. Balanced scorecard (BSC) is one of such measurement systems, which is reported to be highly effective in this particular industry nowadays.  It helps analyze the overall productivity and performance of a call center and define whether it needs improvement or not.

There is no doubt about the fact that information technology (IT) services are extremely significant for any company. That is why much attention is given to the analysis of call center performance nowadays. Generally, there are several metrics that can help measure it. Still, you should keep in mind that these metrics may substantially differ from those applied by other businesses. Listed below are the most vital of them. If you really wish to identify how effective the work of your call center is, then you should start with the first call resolution or FCR metric.

Importance of FRC

According to recent studies, this index is the one that is primarily associated with the level of customer support, thus affecting the performance of any call center. The higher the FCR is, the better the level of servicing proves to be. Therefore, one of the initial objectives of any call center is to increase this indicator. This will eventually result in the reduction of operating expenditures and the overall call volume. Furthermore, it will increase the level of customer and employee satisfaction, because people, who have their questions answered on time, are less likely to be unfriendly, irritated and hostile. What does it mean, however, if the rate of first call resolution appears to be lower that it was initially expected? It may indicate that there are certain problems within the company associated with customer support system. For example, call center agents may not have the required knowledge and skills to handle the call on time or cannot find a proper approach to the customers they are serving, which may prevent them from resolving their problems quickly and efficiently.

Success factors for call center

Another reason for low FCR is problems with the company’s software that do not allow to provide quick response. Another metric that is important for any call center is forecasting accuracy. Theoretically, any customer support center should be staffed in accordance with the amount of calls that may be potentially received during a day. The truth is, however, that it is not easy to achieve this simply because the number of calls may differ from one day to another. This call volume may depend on diverse factors and may not be the same throughout a month or a year. Consequently, it is quite understandable that if the number of agents does not correspond to the amount of received calls, it may negatively affect the call center performance. Finally, we should focus on response time metric, which is closely connected with the level of customer satisfaction. It is not difficult to assume that clients who have to be on hold for a long time may not be satisfied with the work of the call center, in the result of which they may turn to the company’s competitor. If it is not what you are aiming at, then you should undoubtedly consider all the above mentioned metrics, the analysis of which may affect the advancement and profitability of your call center.

In previous posts we have discussed a lot about creating KPIs for call center and designing the Balanced Scorecard. It appears that if you have right KPIs and have implemented them in a right way the Balanced Scorecard idea will work! Unfortunately, more significant is motivation aspect, e.g. how to motivate employees to design and then use good Balanced Scorecard.

Here is one of the ideas:

Criticize Work, Not Indicators.  Don’t criticize an employee just because their indicator is going down.  It’s important to find out why the indicator is going down.  Perhaps the indicator doesn’t reflect the work they’re actually doing,  or maybe the wrong values have been entered into the system.  Of course, the problem might also be that the job was not done well—but even then, do not use the indicator itself as the basis for your criticism.  Indicators are only a measuring stick, so you can obtain feedback, do a better analysis, and understand what works and what doesn’t.

There are more ideas in eTraining: Motivation for the Balanced Scorecard

Nowadays a call center is much more than just a company that receives phone calls from the customers and resolves their queries. It is an individual business, which should obligatory generate profit. Therefore, it should help the managers of the company attract new clients, set and achieve business objectives and implement fresh and extraordinary ideas. A reputable call center should operate round the clock so that the customers could be able to get valuable live responses without having to wait for a long time. Well, this may sound too ideally, but this is exactly what a trustworthy company should be focused at.

The efficiency of the call center functioning may be generally analyzed from the point of view of its managers, operators and, of course, customers. The latter use the services of these companies to have their problems resolved. Therefore, operators try their best effort to ensure quick and effective customer support. Their main task is to search for the required information and offer it to the clients. Managers, in their turn, should focus on making the whole process quick and trouble-free.  This is where call center metrics may come in handy.

Basically, the whole system of call center management may be analyzed by means of implementing the so-called “balanced scorecard” concept. It is nothing more than just a set of metrics and basic rules of their management. How should these metrics be established properly? Let us try to find that out. To start with, the company’s management should realize that there is no sense in developing and implementing an excessive number of these metrics.  Instead, there should be a particular amount of them grouped in proper order. Make sure the metrics you are going to analyze represent the main elements of your business, namely the characteristics of the calls, the operators’ productivity, expenses and profits etc.

The BSC (Balanced Scorecard) system implies using 4 main perspectives to analyze the functioning of your business. These include financial, internal process, learning and growth, and, of course, customer perspectives. Each of them, in its turn, uses specific metrics. Thus, financial perspective implies that any call center should generate income. Otherwise, there is no sense in its functioning. The internal process perspective applies metrics to analyze the process and average time of handling incoming phone calls. The proficiency and skillfulness of the company’s personnel is one of the most decisive factors here. If managers realize that their employees lack particular skills, they should immediately improve the situation by means of providing adequate training. This is what learning and growth perspective is about. The leader of the team should use proven training techniques (such as role-playing activities, remote listening methods, group trainings etc.) and measure their effectiveness.

Customer satisfaction is what contributes to the company’s popularity and profitability. So, it is impossible to analyze its performance without considering the customer perspective, which involves the following metrics: the amount and quality of response time, first call resolution and customer loose rates etc.

In case the improvement of your business performance is a burning issue for you, then you will not go without learning the basics of establishing call center metrics. This is the only possible way to get the desired revenue.

The notion of call center metrics frequently becomes the object of controversy and concern. This is because not all business owners realize the importance of their implementation and those, who do understand their significance, cannot establish them correctly. As a result, there are dozens of questions related to this topic that need to be answered as soon as possible.

The call center BSC cycle

One of the most frequently asked questions is: what call center metrics are considered the most efficient nowadays? Generally, the choice of the indicators to be analyzed depends to a great extent upon the current effectiveness of your business, its profitability and reputability. Nonetheless, we may talk about the following metrics: level of service, customer satisfaction (also known as C-sat), schedule adherence, forecast accurateness, personnel productivity, quality of services, agent attribution etc. However, these are only a few metrics that may be set when it comes to evaluating the overall performance and quality of call center functioning. We will discuss the most critical metrics below.

What makes an effective helpdesk BSC

Let us start with the metric known as the average speed of answer (also referred to as ASA). It implies tracking the amount of time a customer is on phone when waiting for the agent’s response. This indicator differs from one call center to another, making it possible to assume that it can substantially affect the level of customer satisfaction.  Thus, if a caller does not have to wait for a long time to have his/her queries resolved, then he/she will be more likely to stay satisfied with the quality of servicing. Likewise, the customers who are forced to spend more time on phone, will probably not appreciate that and may look for another call center next time.

Abandonment rate is another metric that has to be analyzed when defining the company’s functioning. It involves the percentage of the customers who decide to hung up even before the calls they make reach agents. These rates can be identified by means of using an Automatic Call Distributor (or ACD) report. There is even a special formula that is applied to measure such rates. Experts point out, however, that this metric cannot be fully reliable, because there are lots of factors that may affect the abandonment rate, including insufficient personnel, inadequate call center management skills as well as outside factors. In addition, it is practically impossible to define why exactly the caller has abandoned the call.

Finally, we may proceed to another call center metric that is known as average handle time (or AHT). It is applied to identify the agent’s productivity, which is determined by the amount of calls he/she has handled during a specified period of time. There are a lot of things managers can do in order to enhance the staff’s skills. Thus, they can implement personnel training programs, for example, which will eventually result in the improved overall call center performance.

How can you be sure that your business is running effectively? The answer to this question is quite simple: key performance indicators, also referred to as metrics, will help you measure the company’s performance any time you need that. Basically, you will have to evaluate the most important factors that affect your business and define the potential ways of its improvement.

Benefits of high first resolution calls rate

When it comes to evaluating call center performance, the most crucial aspects involve the level of customer satisfaction, average time of call response, workforce punctuality and productivity, call handling efficiency, the amount of time your employees spend on the telephone. These common metrics may help you define how exactly your company is functioning and whether it is viable to implement any changes there.

Why take care of time per handled call?

What makes call center metrics so valuable? The point is that it is quite hard to analyze the performance of your company as well as its reputable without these indicators. This helps your business remain competitive and popular with the customers. A trustworthy call center should be large with the average number of employees over 50 people sticking to one program.  This will help handle hundreds of thousands of phone calls daily, thus improving the company’s rating and effectiveness.

If there are problems with any of the metrics, it will signal that there are some imperfections in the call center functioning, which have to be urgently improved.   For example, if there is something wrong with first call resolution metric that defines the number of problems resolved during a single conversation, it will increase the amount of repeat and, therefore, pointless calls. Consequently, managers of the company will have to find out the cause of the problem and eliminate it in order to make overall team performance more productive.  Obviously, the improved team will handle incoming calls more efficiently and faster, which can eventually reduce the company’s expenses. As you can see, establishing of proper call center metrics can boost your business and contribute to its profitability.

Having defined the importance of call center metrics, it is high time to learn the procedure of their calculation. To do that properly, you need to identify what factors are decisive for your business and reputation first. Thus, if the speed of call handling is your forte, then you are recommended to establish metrics based on the number of handled calls and amount of time a client is on hold. However, if it is quality of services that contributes to your popularity, then you will not have to measure speed. Instead, you should better check technical services and first call response metrics. This is how call center metrics can help you define what exactly needs improvement in your company.