Call Center Metrics

Call centers are specific business units in the companies. At the same time, some companies prefer to outsource and use services of external call centers. Both options are equally good as long as call center operators are competent enough to answer customers’ questions. For example, a call center specializing in ISP or Web Hosting will not be helpful for producer of laptops. Sure, before launch of a new call center project, operators undergo special training. However, the best way to optimize call center performance is to use Balanced Scorecard system. This article will explain why.

Some of major call center kpis

First and foremost, in order to implement Balanced Scorecard it is necessary to adopt a strategy. What strategy can be adopted for a call center? It depends on what kind call center it is. There are two basic types: sales call centers (those that receive orders by phone or call customer to offer new products) and support services used for post sale support. In the first case increase of accepted orders should make a nice goal, while a customer support service should concentrate on customer satisfaction. For example, such indicator as first resolution calls rate (one and done calls) vividly demonstrate whether or not customer support service is doing a great job. Thus, the decision to implement BSC in a call center is a nice opportunity to think about strategy, review or adopt it, if necessary.

Implementation of Balanced scorecard will harmonize work of a call center, as an internal or external business unit. Strategies and goals adopted for a call center must comply with the company strategy otherwise there is no point in functioning of a call center. For example, if a call center management makes a decision to improve cost per call, this should be related to company strategy. In other words, one should clearly see how this decision contributes to implementation of strategic goals. In order to see such cause and effect ties a comprehensive strategy map must be designed. Ideally, it should answer the question: “How do we implement strategic goals that we have set?”

The 4 perspectives of Balanced Scorecard

BSC use is associated with numerous benefits, but at the same time there are common mistakes and pitfalls. One of the most common mistakes is use of BSC only by several people in a call center. In such a way, BSC becomes a top secret document that is of no use to ordinary operators who actually do the job.

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.

Learn more about best practices of using Balanced Scorecard and KPI in call centers and customer support service. The Balanced Scorecard library features the best articles about Balanced Scorecard and Call Centers:

• The Rundown on Measuring Call Center Efficiency
• On the Lookout for Quality Call Indicators and Measures
• Check Security Performance to Avoid Data Breach
• Maximizing Performance with the Client Loyalty Scorecard
• Customer Relationship Management and CRM KPI
• Improving Overall Performance with the Customer Indicator
• The Key to Preparing High-End Customer Metrics
• The Real Deal about Customer Performance
• Customer Service balanced Scorecard for Every Kind of Business
• The Importance of Customer Service Control
• Measuring Customer Service Performance with the Customer Service Indicator
• How Important are Customer Service Measures?
• Helpful help desk evaluation
• Looking At the Scope of Market Intelligence Scorecard
• The Impact of Measures for Airport for Air Passengers
• Are Preventive Medicine Measures Worth It?
• Evaluating Press Promotion Indicators
• Query Scorecards Improve Company Customer Service
• Make People Buy with an Effective Sales Alignment Technique
• Getting by with Technical Support Indicators
• Formulating a Relevant Support Scorecard for Service Providers
• Measures that Assist a Person to Test Call Center Performance Effectively
• Student Centered University KPIs

Every company having a web site has a menu called Contact us. And most companies have special hotlines. As a rule these are tool free number which you can dial should you have any questions about products and services offered by a company. And as a rule a pleasant female and rarely male voice welcomes you. But sometimes, this is where pleasant things end. If you happen to talk to incompetent call center operator he or she can drive you nuts. We all have watched funny records of how angry customers calling their contact centers. These are exceptions from the rules. As a rule customers and call center operators are being polite. However, if a call center operator fails to fully inform you on the issue you are interested in, or failed to solve your problem you will think twice before making a final decision to stay with the company or buy precuts.

Call center has own key performance indicators (KPI) that show how well call center is performing. So, in order to see how your call center is doing, we recommend use of Balanced Scorecard system. This software evaluated different KPIs which altogether make a full picture of a call center performance.

Evaluate your call center performance with contact scorecard system

In order to evaluate customer support service dialing a number and talking to an operator is not enough. Balanced Scorecard system will help you find and evaluate most important factors that make you call center effective.

With a Balanced Scorecard system you will be able to find weak points in the work of a call center. Sometimes, it seems that everything is OK. You operators professionally solve customers’ problems and answer their questions, but still the revenue is decreasing.

Balanced Scorecard system can do magic. Don’t believe it? Imagine how your employees will be motivated if they will be aware of own weak points? And what if you introduce a special system of bonuses for those who manage to improve a set of KPIs?

So, when using Balanced Scorecard, which KPIs are most important?

Firstly, this is revenue per successful call and cost per call. Any call center should bring profits (or if this is customer support service it should not be unprofitable). These call center metrics are considered most important and representative.

Of course, you need to take care of customer satisfaction, time on hold, blockage rate and rate of abandoned calls. With a Balanced Scorecard system this will be quite easy to do.

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.

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.

Most big companies have own call centers which perform different tasks. If a company sells products, there should always be a call center which takes orders by phone, as not all people prefer using the Internet to place orders. Big companies producing or selling products usually have customer support services, which are call centers that answer customers’ phones calls. As a rule, customers have certain questions and concerns are to products and services provided by the company. Call center operators deal with these issues.

Specific character of operating a call center implies special knowledge and business skills. Call center does not work like traditional business. There are special aspects of work and factors influencing performance of a customer support service or a call center.

Every single call matters for a call center. There are indicators that show how well a call center is operating. If your customers are not satisfied with how call center operators handle calls, you may suffer certain losses. If your call center operators fail to describe the product or payment procedure, or if they are not being polite enough a potential customer may not become a real customer. Thus, your conversion rate will leave much to be desired. This will result in reduced revenue for the whole company. Thus, as you can see, call center may spoil performance of the whole company. Problems in sales department may arise from problems in the call center.

If you want to know roots of the problems and your weak points you need to evaluate performance of your call center by key performance indicators (KPI). Moreover, you need to establish primary and secondary KPIs, as some of them have very little impact on how your call center is doing.

With the help of Balanced Scorecard system you will be able to evaluate your call center and see where you need to work harder to improve overall performance. This system needs from you certain values to assess KPIs, i.e. factors that make your business successful.

Call center metrics is very important for top managers as ordinary operators may not know what they are doing wrong. It is manager’s job to inform employees on weak and strong points in their work. So, for instance, if having used balanced Scorecard system, you discovered that your operators keep callers on hold for quite a long time and some customers do not have enough patience to wait, you need to seek relevant solutions.

Quality today has become the most distinctive factor in the success of any call center and the degree of attention that one pays to it is directly related to the customer satisfaction scores that the centre receives. While there are many techniques available for evaluating the quality aspects in a call center, there is no better one than using key performance indicators (KPIs) for obtaining measurable results.

KPIs offer a holistic and well rounded approach to negotiate the myriad aspects of quality control which range from individual quality to taking care of process deliverables. Based on the indicators that you design for your call center scorecard, you can plot the most crucial parameters and then give them higher values in your reference scale. When combined with other tools like TQM, KPIs can effectively increase the overall quality score by a significant extent.

Apart from taking care of regular quality aspects KPIs can also help you to gauge factors others than core skills (resolution of the issue) like empathy and incorporate adequate customer focus in dealing with all kinds of customers. Also issues like first time resolution and avoiding repeat issues too can also be improved with the help of KPIs.

The best idea to measure call center performance is to combine Call Center KPI from commercial library of metrics and BSC Designer PRO - with all its powerful features.

Why not visualize the strategy of improving of call center performance with strategy map? The latest version of BSC Designer PRO allows to create strategy maps, export them or print. Check more screenshots for details.

The case study on United CallSoft highlights the significant role that techniques like Balanced Scorecard can play improving the employee productivity in call centers. A key insight that this case offers us is the fact that managers at call center should understand that the workstation conditions are appropriate for workers minimizing the negative effects on their health. This is because of the observation that several the health disturbances have direct impact on the employees’ performance. The developers of the call center should pay the desired attention to such aspects for creating comfortable surroundings. These should be able to assist the workers in their functional requirements of processes and job.

However, the intended users should pay attention to the fact that ‘not every countable measure is countable and not every countable parameter can be counted’. Collecting metrics just because those can be easily counted will not serve the purpose rather push the firm in a wrong direction altogether. Therefore, the key is to settle for only those pieces that are most likely to convey the ongoing situation in as precise manner as possible. To arrive at such a set, one can bank upon the best practices being followed by industry leaders. Read more in Call Center Balanced Scorecard Case Study.