For those that are call center managers, it’s evident that every decision you make will directly or indirectly impact your call center. With that being said, it isn’t a smart choice to make decisions or policies at the last minute, because your customers won’t be satisfied. In order to successfully manage your center and improve business, you need to rely on call center metrics.
These metrics will give you a variety of information about your center in a short amount of time, allowing you to choose what improvements need to be made, and what things need to be changed. Once you obtain the KPIs in real-time, you can learn how to use them, and implement better practices for the sake of your center. Here are the 10 more useful metrics that your company should be tracking.
- Average Call Abandonment Rate- If you want to deliver great customer service, which most centers do, there are a few things your employees need to change. Most customers don’t like to be on hold when calling for support, and due to this, rates of call abandonment will increase due to agents not being available. Sure, this metric won’t tell you much about your agents but will tell you about their productivity levels.
- Percentage of Blocked Calls- Blocked calls refers to the number of callers that dialed for support and were greeted with a dial tone. If this metric is high, it means that your agents are not able to help customers, creating clients that are unhappy and frustrated. This KPI might be large because there aren’t enough agents working at a time, or maybe the lines your agents are using are being used for a different reason. Whatever the answer to this is, you need to find a way to improve these rates and allow your customers to get into contact with an agent at all times.
- Average Time in the Queue- If you are seeing that customers are waiting longer in call lines than usual, you need to educate your team on how to boost efficiency in handling calls. Measuring the time that customers wait in line for an available agent will help to improve the wait time. In order to find this data, you can divide the total time callers are waiting by the total number of calls answered. An easy way to improve this metric will be to offer customers a call back service, so they don’t have to be waiting in line for an extended period of time.
- Service Level-This metric is also known as agent productivity and can determine how long it takes each agent to take calls and how many are answered within a specific time. Through viewing the results for this metric, you will be able to tell if agents are moving quickly to other calls or not. Your business should have already determined an expected range, so making sure employees are within these numbers will eliminate this issue in time.
- Average Speed of Answer- By measuring agent productivity, the average speed of answer is the most important. This metric is calculated in terms of the average time it takes for calls to be answered within a given timeframe. If this metric is high, it could mean that agents are not moving as quickly as they should be, and by speaking more with them, you can determine why. By seeing what is keeping them from picking up their phone faster, it may result in implementing tools that will allow them to work smarter, and not harder.
- Average Handle Time- Measuring the average call handle time is one of the most important metrics to track when looking into agent productivity. This metric is determined as the average time it takes an agent to pick up the phone, to the second they end the call. Measuring this metric can be quite tricky because each agent’s time needs to fall within the given amounts set by the business. If your agent’s call handling time is too long, it may indicate that they are struggling with the requests that customers have. On the other hand, if an agent’s call handling time is too short, that agent might not be offering any real assistance. It really is a sweet spot that needs to be met and taken into consideration when dealing with customers. You can use quality assurance metrics to track if all bases are being covered. If you are finding that your agents are not meeting the perfect amount of time determined by your company, training might be a smart option to improve this KPI.
- Average After Call Work Time- This metric measures the average time it takes agents to do all the needed work after handling a call or customer request. Yes, this might take some agents more time because they are providing accurate and detailed information, but an after call work time that is too high should raise a red glad for some managers. Some businesses can offer templates if paperwork is too taxing, but ultimately talking to your employees that have high after-call work times will be most beneficial. By hearing some reasons as to why their call times are too high, your business can work with them to implement a better system.
- First Call Resolution- Measuring first call resolution is the absolute clearest way to measure agent productivity and effectiveness when dealing with customers. If customers have to call back several times, are often transferred, or handed over to a supervisor, then something needs to be changed. Ideally, each agent should be able to solve every client’s inquiries. As a business manager, one needs to speak to agents and determine why customer issues were not addressed the first time around. A smart idea may be to set up proper training, making it easier to offer employees solutions to increase first call resolution times.
- Occupancy Rates- This metric will measure agent productivity across all call-related duties. It is a measure of how much time your agents spend on live calls conversing with customers and finishing up the work needed for those calls. The bottom line is that if your agents’ occupancy rates are low, they might not be doing work-related tasks. Using this metric can identify agent duties, and finding out if they are doing what they need to be.
- Customer Satisfaction- For all call centers, customer satisfaction is the first priority. Some of the other listed call center metrics can aid in revealing where agents are falling short, customer satisfaction surveys and comments will be the easiest way to gain a better understanding of customer needs.
Customer satisfaction is always determined through after call surveys or agent assessments. By using these, your business will have a better understanding of how agents are doing, well before looking more into your call centers metrics.
If you are a call center manager, you can use these metrics to gain a general sense of how well agents are doing, and what can be done to improve customer satisfaction. These key performance indicators, or KPIs, can pinpoint the areas of success and areas that could be slightly improved. By centralizing your KPIs in one place, and sharing the results with your team, your business will be able to find the best solution for all.