Call center managers receive volumes of data from various platforms focusing on different business processes. Metrics provide a means of monitoring this data.
There are many types of performance indicators for call centres, depending on the role and objective of each team. For example, managers need to monitor strategic performance indicators to establish an analysis aimed at making customer service more profitable. Operational managers, on the other hand, need to gather more comprehensive performance indicators in order to make the right decisions to optimise customer relationship and workforce management.
Best practice suggests measuring three key areas to maximise customer service satisfaction and maintain a call center that cultivates efficiency and performance:
- Customer experience
- Agent productivity
- Call center operations
Customer experience performance indicators: customer relations KPIs
Customer satisfaction is what keeps companies in business, but how do you know if your call center is meeting customer expectations and excelling in customer relationship management? How customers rate their experience with a company’s products, services and other elements can determine whether a customer’s experience is positive, negative or somewhere in between.
Surveys show that customers were less satisfied when they had to contact the company again, re-explain their problem, be transferred or go to extra lengths to get a solution. Consequently, the performance indicators that need to be monitored to optimise the customer experience are as follows:
- First Contact Resolution: First Contact Resolution tracks the number of times an agent has successfully dealt with the customer’s issue without the need for a call back. This performance indicator helps create excellent customer experiences and is the cornerstone of call center KPIs.
- Customer satisfaction score: Customer satisfaction shows how satisfied a customer is with products, services or customer care. These scores are measured by conducting a customer survey and are one of the most commonly used performance indicators for understanding which factors are having a negative or positive impact on the call centre.
- Customer Effort Score: This performance indicator or customer service KPI indicates whether the products have succeeded in resolving the buyer’s problem or not. These metrics can be scored using a five-point scale or a seven-point scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. Higher scores indicate better customer experiences.
Agent productivity performance indicators
Productivity metrics produce call records that track and measure the efficiency with which agents complete tasks. These metrics help to track performance, as well as highlighting areas for improvement in terms of customer relationship management.
However, it is essential to focus on the most useful performance indicators, which are as follows:
- Average handling time: This performance indicator measures the time an agent spends completing a single interaction. Many agents are measured by speed of resolution, as call centres aim to reduce call waiting times and increase retention rates. Agents with faster handling times are considered more efficient.
- Agent utilisation rate: This performance indicator is calculated by dividing the number of hours worked by the agent’s availability. For example, if an agent answers customer calls for six out of eight hours, the agent’s utilisation that day would be 75%.
- Average speed of response: This is the average time an agent takes to answer incoming calls, including the time the agent’s phone rings, but not the time the caller spends in IVR systems or in the queue. The longer the delays, the greater the problems of efficiency and accessibility are considered to be.
Performance indicators linked to call center operations or: call center KPIs
These metrics help, for example, to identify peak times, assess changing trends and forecast staffing requirements more effectively. They can also help to understand the effect of company initiatives, such as product launches and marketing campaigns, on call volumes. Here is a list of performance indicators related to day-to-day call center operations to keep in mind:
- Cost per call: This performance indicator tracks the average cost of a call handled by a call center agent. Its purpose is to provide an overview of the efficiency of operations and to help make the right decisions in terms of resource allocation. The formula is calculated by taking the total cost of all calls divided by the total number of calls.
- Call arrival rate: This performance indicator enables call centres to assess the total number of calls received within a specific time period. The period can be expressed in days, hours or minutes. Some operational managers monitor this KPI on a daily basis, while others use it to identify trends over time.
- Peak hour traffic: Every call center should monitor when agents encounter the highest volume of inbound traffic, particularly specific time slots with higher call volumes. This KPI is useful for ensuring workforce engagement and forecasting staffing needs.
- Average call duration: This KPI provides an overview of the average call duration over a given period. It is used to define team expectations and help them manage their workloads more effectively.
If you’re looking for a call center that puts performance and efficiency at the heart of its concerns, don’t hesitate to contact us. Advancia Teleservices will be your ultimate ally in customer relationship management?