Call Center Metrics

Very often we judge the company or service provider exclusively by quality of their call center. Indeed, we expect to listen to any answers to our questions and we want our problems to be solved by call center operators. That’s why every time we have a question or problem related to the purchase product and service we are looking for a toll free phone number and make a call. Naturally, we want to hear a pleasant voice and talk to a qualified specialist. Unfortunately, some call centers has nothing to offer but a pleasant voice and politeness.

Three key tasks of any call center

A call center is a company’s face. We never know who rules the company that has produced your laptop, cell phone or a TV. Moreover, we don’t care much. We are interested in quality products, and we greatly appreciate post sale service. Complete answers to our questions are part of post sale servers. That’s why every successful company should optimize work of a call center. This is the best way to attract new customers and retain those who have already made purchases with the company.

Balanced scorecard is used in different business areas, and call center is perhaps one of the best places for BSC to be used. Call center operators directly contact customers and that’s why their efficiency and professionalism directly influences such an indicator as customer satisfaction. It is not a secret that customer satisfaction is related to growth in revenue and increase of company capital.

Call centers increase number of regular customers

Before using balanced scorecard in a call center, it is really important to create a special working group that will start implementation process. Call center chief manager as well as company top management must understand that it is impossible to implement balanced scorecard without changes in organization and involvement of company personnel. Of in order to develop an effective set of key performance indicators it is necessary to listen to opinions of call center operators. Of the talk to customers every day, and they know what customers actually need and what problems call center has to solve.

Of course, ordinary call center operators do not have knowledge of strategic management. Leave that to top managers and strategic planners. But an ordinary call center operator can make suggestions as to the right choice of KPIs, these indicators directly influence their work, or in other words, their work is measured with these indicators.

Evaluation of business performance is all important, especially in the post crisis economy. Markets are becoming increasingly competitive, and tough competition has its advantages and drawbacks. To drawbacks we refer constant desire of competitors to gain an increased market share and wipe out other companies. That’s why it is so important to automate business management and be able to respond to changes in internal or external environment.

Almost all companies that sell products or services have contact centers, also called help desks or customer support service/call centers. What would you do if you have some questions about purchased product or a service? Of course you will look for a toll free number published on the company web site. And this is by conversation with a context center operator that you will make your judgment about the company, quality of its services and its business reputation.

Use BSC system to improve perofrmance of a call center

Evaluation of call center performance will give you answers to many questions, as well as help you set and reach strategic goals related to development and enhancement of a customer support service.

For this reason use of balanced scorecard system is highly recommended. This tool created in early1990s is now the most popular automation tool for business management. In case of a call center balanced scorecard system will evaluate special KPIs relevant to specific character of a call center work. They keep the eye is a key performance indicator which shows a certain aspect in the work of a company or its department.

The traditional approach tends to view financial KPI as the most important. Well, this is partially true and logical as the goal of any business is making profits and gaining competitive advantage in the market. But at the same time balanced scorecard system also fought uses on operational aspects which are called nonfinancial.

Do not financial KPIs we refer such indicators as customer satisfaction, number of one and done calls (first resolutions calls), time on hold, abandoned calls rate, blockage, employee satisfaction, organization climate, training effectiveness and efficiency. Financial KPI include cost per call and revenue per successful call (if the company sells something via phone).

With balanced scorecard system you will be able to set long-term goals and improve performance of a call center. A well performing call center creates at perfect business image for a company which in its turn is attraction for new customers. More customers means competitive advantage which is the ultimate goal of any business.

Evaluate most important call center kpi

What is most important in business? Of course, any business must have an effective business model. How can you see if your business is effective? Sure, you need to run it. But it may happens that in course of time business models that were effective a year ago prove to be absolutely useless in new reality. In order to implement a new strategy one needs to know what did not work in the previous plan.

This is called evaluation of business performance. In order to get a full picture of business performance, certain indicators need to be analyzed. These indicators give answers to question: “How well is business/company doing.” Every business has own set of key performance indicators (KPI). Of course, many of them have much in common, while some have a very specific character attributed to certain business types.

Every company needs to take care of relations with its customer. Even if a customer does not buy from your company, you need to stay in touch with him. Customer relationship management (crm) is a very popular strategy of marketing products and working with customers. A loyal customer is the best customer a company can have.

Evaluate crm ratios to improve business performance

What is the main communication means between a business and a customer? Of course, this is contact center. If you have questions about quality of a product you never call company’s CEO. As a rule you dial a long toll free number and talk to a call center operator. Your judgment about the company is formed by how you talk to a call center representative. It means that a call center should work perfectly, or be striving to work perfectly.

Before implementing any strategy (including crm) a manager needs to know what goes wrong in current business. It is impossible to expand a call center if it is working inefficiently at the moment. Small problems will turn into big ones.

CRM ratios and call center metrics

Balanced Scorecard is the tool which will help you evaluate economic performance of a call center to find weak and strong points. Armed with figures and graphs you can easily see the trends and plan work of a call center for some time ahead.

Besides, Balanced Scorecard system will make your operators more self-confident as they will be aware of own mistakes and weak point. This will results in better personnel performance and thus, better performance of the entire call center.

Modern business undergoes a very difficult stage of development. The worst economic crisis has hurt thousands or perhaps millions of businesses all over the world. In the post crisis economy suffering even minor losses or inefficient spending of money means that your business will not survive for a long time.

Thus, in order to make sure you are not losing hard earned profits or wasting money you could have invested in your business, one needs to evaluate it and find all strengths and weaknesses to develop a comprehensive strategic development plan.

Most companies have call centers which either sell products/services or provide customers with support and guidance. Customer support services should employ only competent operators who know the subject matter (for example, network technologies if this is a web hosting provider). You cannot afford having an ineffective call center as your customers may turn with their backs to you and your company which will be a disaster.

To properly evaluate performance of your call center it is not enough just to calculate revenue or total expenses related to maintaining it. Of course, these figures will tell you much but they will not tell you what caused negative performance of a call center. In such a case an effective and progressive manager should use Balanced Scorecard system.

What is it? In order to better explain it, let’s take a hypothetic example of an imaginary call center. So, you are a top manager in the call center who needs to know what goes wrong with it. You are armed with basic figures like net loss or revenue, number of call answered for a certain period, number of employees etc. All these figures can say just one: something is wrong.

Balanced Scorecard system is represented by software that takes all these figures into account to evaluate all key performance indicators (KPI). KPIs are factors that influence business performance, in our case call center performance.

You will be surprised at how efficiently the program can work. You will get to know about all weaknesses in the company which you will be able to address directly. Besides, your employees will know what they are doing wrong which will contribute to motivation, self-confidence and positive organization climate.

Balanced Scorecard system and call center metrics are the best tools to evaluate performance of a call center, optimize its work and improve indicators.

Much in your company will depend on call center performance, of course of you have any. But usually, well reputed companies always have a call center. Operators either place orders or consult customers on different issues. Thus, a call center may have two major goals: sell products and services by phone, and provide customers with ongoing support.

If your call center shows poor performance this may result in: a) decrease of revenue since operators will sell less products/services by phone, b) low customer satisfaction which may result in customer churn, while new customer are unlikely to buy from you if they did not like their conversation with a call center operator.

So, as you can see, you can be the best manager in the entire world, but your call center may spoil just everything you managed to accomplish. You need to keep your nose to the wind, or in other words regularly evaluate performance of your call center to be aware of most serious problems and hardships in work.

In order to be well informed on strengths and weaknesses of your call center, you should definitely use Balanced Scorecard system. Specialized software will do all the job for you. All the program needs is figures, like average time of one call, total expenses related to call center maintenance etc.

Balanced Scorecard concept employs the ideal of evaluating separate indicators which altogether represent overall performance of a company. In case of a call center these are special indicators that show how well your operators cope with their job.

There are not many of such KPIs (key performance indicators) related to call center metrics. However, it is very important to pick the most valuable ones. If you focus on secondary factors, you are risking to waste money for nothing.

So, be careful when picking the right KPIs. This list will surely help you make the right decisions and properly evaluate call center performance.

Concentrate on cost per call as too expensive calls make take your company down. There are many ways to reduce cost per call, however, you need to make sure your operators get proper compensation.

Customer satisfaction is another indicator which is very important to any call center manager. Angry customers rarely become loyal to a company. So, all questions of callers need to be answered.

First resolution calls. These calls are called one and done calls. It means that a customer needs only one call to resolve his/her problems.

Imagine you want to purchase a laptop, or buy web hosting plan from a web hosting provider. You have found numerous web sites with attractive offers. But, perhaps, the first thing you will do is finding a toll free number to which you can call and ask questions about the products and services you are about to buy. So, basically, your decision to buy products/services pretty much depends on how successful your call to the company will be.

Why did we start this article with hypothetic situation? It is to describe how important a call center is. It does not matter what goals a call center pursue it is definitely a mediator between customers and business itself. Call center operators are soldiers who are located at the forefront of a business. These are the people who persuade potential customers buy products and services, and thus they generate income.

It is important to feel sure that a call center works perfectly. Sure, there are no perfect things, and if you are aspiring to perfection you will most certainly succeed. In order to develop and expand any business, one should first evaluate it. The same concerns call center. If you plan to increase the number of operators or organize training sessions, you fist need to evaluate current performance to find strengths and weaknesses.

Using Balanced Scorecard system you will be able to perform evaluation of call center performance within a short period of time. With the help of automated software it is possible to find out all weak and strong point. The program will provide you with results in form of graphs, figures and percents.

Start with support control in evaluation of call center performance

Support control is one of the ways to monitor call center performance

What exactly does Balanced Scorecard system evaluate? There is such a notion as key performance indicator. In case of a call center, these are indicators that directly influence work of a call center, thus making it either effective or ineffective.

So, if you want to organize support control you need to take into account the following KPIs (key performance indicators):

1. Revenue per successful call. Balanced Scorecard system will divide total revenue generated by call center operators by total number of calls. If it turns out that net revenue per successful call is lower than cost per call, your call center does a poor job.
2. Cost per call. This is the amount of money you have to spend to answer one call.
3. Customer satisfaction. Ask your customers to rate calls. Satisfied customers turn into the most loyal customers of your company.

Evaluation of business performance can be one of the most difficult and daunting tasks. Net revenue rate is a good indicator, however, there are so many factors that influence business performance and measure success. At that, each business has own factors and indicators. A retail sales company will take care of sales rate while a customer support service should focus on customer satisfaction and first call resolution.

It should be noted that all respected and trusted companies have own call centers, no matter what kind of business they run. Naturally, current, former and potential customers have questions and concerns related to products and services they have purchased or are about to purchase. A call center is a linking element between business and its customers.

It is very important that your call center does not scare customers away. You need to understand that this is your business face. It is a call center operator that represents the company during the call. A caller does not know what a good person CEO or head manager is. A caller judge the company by a conversation with a call center operator.

Without any doubt, an effective manager needs to evaluate performance of a call center to find solutions to existing problems. We recommend use of Balanced Scorecard system which is a special program that performs calculations to evaluate business performance by KPI (key performance indicators). As already said above, each business has different KPIs, and call center is not an exception here. There are certain factors and indicators that make work of a call center effective and efficient.

Balanced Scorecard system will help you detect the problems before they have harmful consequences for your business. Call center metrics include numerous KPIs, but some of them are very important both for callers and call center operators.

There is one common thing about all businesses. An enterprise must be profitable. In case of a call center, this business should make profits if this is a sales call center. In case of customer support service, we cannot talk about profitability. However, effective customer support service contributes to overall performance of business.

Balanced Scorecard system will help you evaluate such indicators as cost per call, revenue per successful call (if this is a sales call center), customer and employees satisfaction, time on hold (time a customer spends waiting for a specialist competent in his problem), blockage and abandoned calls rate, number of one and done calls etc.

Balanced Scorecard is an inseparable element of a manager’s tool kit. This software will make it possible to improve business performance and develop future development plans.