Call Center Metrics

Is it necessary to measure customer satisfaction when evaluation efficiency of a call center? The answer is definitely “yes”! In fact, this is one of the most important indicators in a call center BSC that should be given appropriate weight. The point is that a call center is a business unit that is created to serve customers. Call centers exist to provide customers with pre- and post sale support. Besides, potential customers may call and ask questions about company products and services, using obtained answers in their purchasing decision. Thus, call centers should really pay attention as to how they serve customers rather than to focus on the number of handled calls. If customers are not satisfied with call center performance, the company will more likely to face losses in the short and long term. The problem is that unsatisfied existing customers will not buy from the same company ever again while potential ones will think twice before making a decision to buy (in case they were not satisfied with the communication experience with call center operators). Thus, importance of customer satisfaction evaluations should never be put in question. Let’s review several ways of measuring customer satisfaction.

Member of a call center BSC working group

Email. Very often support is provided by email. Ticket systems are quite popular. Thus, we have got several options here. Customers may be provided an email support and then they are asked about support quality via email. Alternatively, customers may receive phone support, but again asked about support quality via email. This is possible if a customer has revealed his/her email address and consented to receiving information via email.

Responsibilities in a bsc working group

Telephone surveys and call backs. This is quite a popular method of evaluating customer satisfaction. When a customer ends up his/her conversation, a call center operator may ask to rate it. Of course, such a customer should be asked permission. It also happens that call center operators perform callbacks, i.e. call customers after they have made calls. Sure, some customers may be unwilling to talk, but a huge portion of them will still share their opinion.

Company web site. We are living in the age of the Internet. Customers are more willing to use web based services. Thus, it would be reasonable to offer them a survey form online. By asking simple questions, call center managers will learn important info on what customers want to have in a quality support. This info is to be used in decision making and strategic planning.

Implementation of balanced scorecard made a quite a long time. But, perhaps, the most important stage is development of BSC, key performance indicators and strategy maps. The company can adjust make a decision to implement balanced scorecard and start using it the next day. No way that can happen. Implementation of balanced scorecard is preceded by proper preparations. The company first needs to decide who will be responsible for development of balanced scorecard and who will be in charge. This seems like an easy question to answer but in fact it appears to be a great problem for many companies.

Some of major BSC mistakes

Formation of special working groups and teams is a very important step which needs to be taken in development of balanced scorecard. Moreover, these groups should consist of top specialists. Many companies are making a typical mistake of including only top managers to the working group in charge of BSC development. Of course, top managers know much about strategy and strategic planning, but some of them are far from operational level. Some top managers have never seen company customers, while head of sales department can tell a lot about customer groups. For example, chief HR manager knows how to improve organization climate and the company which will encourage personnel to show their best performance.

Working group members

That’s why it is extremely important that BSC team should be well balanced. Sometimes companies hire external advisors who have experience in implementation of balanced scorecard in other companies. But it happens that they simply use most typical balanced scorecard models which do not necessarily suit specific company needs.

Another important issue is managerial style. Experience shows that it is better to have a bad strategy but implemented in a proper way than to have the best strategy and do wrong things in order to reach strategic goals. Strategy can be changed but managerial style may remain the same. Some old school managers use old fashioned approaches to project management. Moreover, they consider balanced scorecard to be just another control tool. Of obviously, personnel will not like this idea, and balanced scorecard will be simply unused.

That’s why, it is extremely important to get personnel prepared to use balanced scorecard. And top managers should show their faith in this system and acquire new approaches. They have to change themselves in order to change the organization. Balanced scorecard should initiate changes otherwise the system will not work.

A call center plays an important rule in the work of any company that sells products or services. It is but the work of a call center or a customer support service that real and potential customers for their judgment about the company. What do you usually do when you have questions or concerns about purchased products or services? Of course, you call customer support service with the hope to get your questions answered and problems solved. Call centers may have different goals and purposes in different companies. Some businesses use call centers to sell products and services while others employ the phone operators to provide customers with ongoing support and guidance. If you called customer support service and your questions were not answered you would probably think that it was not worth to deal with such a company. The thus, you are a lost customer for such a business. Of the innards of economy it is very unwise to lose customers because of poor quality services.

A call center, as in any aspect and elemental business structure, needs to be measured and evaluated. Business up performance measurement is used to help company reach strategic goals. In this sense, balanced scorecard is a number one tool that communicates operational management with the company strategic vision. Of the balanced scorecard evaluates key performance indicators, also known as KPI. Call center has own set of KPIs that represents its performance.

Call center metrics has own specific character as the process of calling involves two parties: the caller and the operator. The caller has to be satisfied with his call while the operator needs to do everything to resolve problems as soon as possible.

Major call center kpi

So, what are major KPIs for call center?

1. Revenue per successful call. If the call center has commercial goals it needs to sell as much as possible. By increasing this KPI top management of the company increases revenue.
2. Cost per call. Logically, the less money a company spends to answer one call, the more efficiently it works. However, here one should be reasonable, and excessive economy and saving may result in poor quality service.
3. Conversion rate. This is % of call that ended up with successful sales.
4. Average call handling time. The less time an operator needs to answer one call, the better for the company and callers.
5. First resolutions calls rate. This is % of calls during which the problems were solved at once (customer do not have to call again).

How a call center contributes to success of the company

Many top managers mistakenly think that implementation of balanced scorecard is a simple process and expect fast results from this system. Balanced scorecard is often viewed as kind of an magic tool that solve all problems in the company and turns a mediocre business into an international corporation. Well, this is not so. Balanced Scorecard requires serious investments of time, money and efforts. The company, its management and personnel should be ready to implement and use this system to reach strategic goals. That’s why, it is very important that those who are in charge of implementing balanced scorecard are well educated on this issue you and ready to use it.

Templates on Balanced Scorecard is a great learning tool

First and foremost, the company has to clarify its strategic goals. This is the most important stage as without clear strategy balance scorecard will turn into a useless pile of documents, tables and charts.

Developers of BSC designer offer their customers free and bait products that provide users with additional information on balanced scorecard. We have already talked about training course on BSC from AKS-LABS. This time you can enjoy the free product which is that collection of templates on balanced scorecard.

These templates can be used to draw a strategy maps for the company, clarifies strategic goals, measures, response actions etc. The templates are offered in power point and pdf extension, so users of free to choose the suitable one.

The strategy map in templates covers four perspectives: financial, customers, internal processes, learning and growth. It is possible to fill in own KPI, measures, objectives, targets and initiatives. As a result the full and comprehensive company strategy map will be made.

Templates also include screenshots of BSC designer, in particular excel with BSC designer. This will give users and those interested in balanced scorecard a general idea on how the system works.

Check out free templates

Download free BSC templates

You can improve call center income with balanced scorecard implementation. The key here is to use relevant KPIs for your balanced scorecard.

For the most part, call centers all over the world are indeed earning modest income. The large and stable ones even earn millions of dollars in a single month of operations. The knowledge and experience gained over the years have certainly contributed to the successful operations of these call centers. But then again, experience and knowledge are not the only things these call centers have in common. They also have what is known as a balanced scorecard. Yes, it is indeed easy to improve call center income with balanced scorecard implementation.

Call centers provide customer service for the clients of large companies. These companies are of such magnitude that they cannot handle the provision of customer support of all their clients. Should they strive to handle this on their own, they might end up not giving the quality customer support their clients deserve. This is then the reason why these large companies delegate the task of providing their clients customer support to call centers. The typical call center would then have different accounts to handle, and they would then employ the different departments to handle the different issues the clients would be calling about. Because there are different accounts to handle, then performance here would be measured variedly as well. This can make measuring performance all the more complicated. Thus, there is indeed a need to employ a balanced scorecard to monitor the performance of the call center as a whole. From constant monitoring, there would certainly be improvement in terms of performance. And where there’s enhanced performance, there will definitely be improvement in terms of income as well.

It is actually a bit difficult to develop the key performance indicators or KPIs to be included on the balanced scorecard. This is because the KPIs here have to be in quantifiable form so that they can be measured accurately. Fortunately, in the call center context, there are many factors that are quantifiable, and these can be used as KPIs as well. In fact, these are just some of the performance measures being used by the lot of today’s call centers.

* Average Talk Time (ATT) or mean conversation time

* Average Handling Time (AHT) or mean dealing time

* Service Level (SL%) or number of calls answered during a limited time period

* Delay experienced by customers while waiting in queue

* Percentage of calls bearing resolved issues

* Percentage of calls bearing unresolved issues

* Number of calls handled by representatives per hour

* Customer satisfaction

These are just some of the KPIs that many call centers are using nowadays to measure the performance of the establishments as a whole. The main thing to remember here is that there should be just a limited number of KPIs employed. As tempting as it is to use many KPIs, this is actually not advisable. This is because if you use many KPIs, there would be more room for extraneous variables, which can influence the accuracy of measurement here. Thus, it would be better to use the KPIs that have relevance to the operations of call centers. With just these KPIs, you can then improve call center income with balanced scorecard implementation.