Measuring Call Centre Performance – 8 Metrics You Should Track
The call centre isn’t just about picking up the phone 24/7, it plays a pivotal role in supporting customers and managing their relationship with businesses. If customer interactions are handled poorly at the call centre, it would drive customers away, turn off prospects and weaken the reputation of any brand.
Ensuring a positive customer experience over the phone leads to satisfied and loyal customers who recommend the brand to others. This makes it important to ensure your call centre is effectively supporting customers and leaving them satisfied and confident in your brand.
How Do You Measure Your Call Center Performance?
Calling for support is one of the main ways customers will interact with your business. Since a single experience can make or break a customer’s relationship with your company, it is important to know whether or not your call centre is consistently delivering excellent service.
Your call centre metrics can be a direct reflection of the kind of customer experience you provide. Below are important metrics you should track in your call centre:
#1. First Contact Resolution (FCR)
First Contact resolution (FCR) is an important call centre metric which measures the ability to resolve a customer’s problem, questions or needs the first time they call, thereby eliminating the need for the customer to follow up with a second call.
The better a call centre’s FCR is, the more successful and efficient it is in providing meaningful solutions and satisfying customers. Calculating First Contact Resolution (FCR) can be straightforward, once you have the required information.
FCR is measured by dividing the number of cases resolved in a single call to the total number of issues that have been resolved. It sounds easy, but collecting the data is the tricky part when formulating it.
Check out this in-depth article on how to use this basic formula and the five ways to collect the data required for it.
#2. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is another important metric, and it is pretty straightforward. CSAT measures customer satisfaction with a business, purchase, or interaction. This metric is calculated by getting customer feedback on a particular interaction with an agent.
The simplest way to gather this information is through surveys (avoid these survey mistakes). These surveys are to be administered at the end of the interaction, while the experience is still fresh in their mind. Email is a good way to get this feedback from customers, but you can also send SMS surveys or even contact customers on social media.
You can easily calculate CSAT percentage, i.e. the total percentage of satisfied customers. All you have to do is divide the number of positive ratings by the number of ratings and multiply it by 100.
#3. Cost Per Contact
This metric measures how much each customer contact costs your call centre and it is a key part of cost-benefit analyses. Whenever an agent picks up the phone, it costs a call centre money—salary, software, hardware, electricity, etc.
Cost per contact is defined as the sum of all costs associated with running a call centre (e.g., salaries, facilities, software, hardware, etc.) divided by the number of contacts handled. It is calculated by dividing the total number of calls in a particular period by the total operating cost in the same period.
Cost per contact = (Operating cost + labour) / Totals calls
For example, if Company X had $50,000 in costs for the year and answered 100,000 calls in that time, $50,000 divided by 100,000 calls equals $0.50 per call.
#4. Abandoned Call Rate
Abandonment Rate is the number of callers that hang up before being connected to a live agent in the call centre. It is one of the most widely tracked metrics in the call centre industry. When the abandonment rate increases above eight per cent, customer satisfaction begins to drop off significantly.
Interestingly reducing abandonment rate will increase cost as more agent headcount is required to lower abandonment rates. This suggests that there is an optimal range for call abandonment rate. If you go much above this range, customer satisfaction will drop off fairly quickly; if you go much below it, support costs will increase rapidly.
The accepted industry standard on average abandonment rate is between 5 – 8%.
#5. Average Handling Time (AHT)
Average handling time (AHT) is the average time spent by an agent in handling customer issues or transactions, from when an agent answers a call until the agent disconnects.
This also includes the amount of time a customer is placed on hold within the duration of the call and the after-call work time which the agent spends doing back-office tasks. It is a commonly tracked metric in the call centre industry as it is directly related to caller satisfaction.
It tells you how much time agents spend working on a task and when they are unable to deal with a new work item. It is the bedrock for all call centre planning systems
AHT is calculated by adding together; the agent’s total talk time, total hold time and total after-call work time. This is then divided by the total number of calls handled.
#6. Average Hold-time
Hold time is the amount of time that elapses from when a customer is put on hold until the moment an agent becomes available (or the customer hangs up). This does not include the time required to initially answer the call or the time the customer spends in the interactive voice response (IVR) menu.
Two values are necessary to calculate hold time; the total number of seconds that customers wait on hold during the course of a call during a certain period of time, and the total number of calls handled by call centre agents over the same period of time.
Average hold time = Number of Seconds Customers Spend on Hold / Total Number of Calls Handled
#7. Attrition Rate
Attrition rate is a measure of staff turnover annually, expressed as a percentage. This is the percentage of agents who leave the call centre to work elsewhere. Attrition significantly impacts customer satisfaction, call centre planning and team morale.
Depending on who you ask, call centres have a turnover rate of between 30 and 45 per cent. By comparison, the 2013 average employee turnover rate for all industries in the United States was 15.1%.
High attrition also leads to higher operating costs as resources will be constantly invested in recruiting and training new agents. Research by Incontact revealed that every 10 per cent of attrition has been shown to lead to one per cent of customer churn.
Attrition also impacts on customer satisfaction – The more experienced your agents are, the more efficiently they will be able to answer customer enquiries, manage callers, and solve problems.
Monthly attrition = Total agents lost during the month / Total employees during the month
Annual attrition = Total agents lost during the year / Total employees during the year
Check out: how to Measure Contact Center Turnover to learn more about measuring call centre attrition.
#8. Peak Hour Traffic
Peak hour is the time of the day when there are maximum calls to be handled by agents. Knowing what time this usually happens can be determined with the help of real-time monitoring.
This allows you to plan your agent allocation in a way that allows the call centre to handle the workload during the busiest hour of the day effectively.
Bonus Infographic
This infographic by salesforce differentiates between human and robotic customer service, their “measure of success” in the call centre & the proper approach for investing in agent training.
Click To Enlarge
Via Salesforce
Your call centre is a key customer support channel. Measuring and tracking these metrics are crucial in ensuring customers have a positive experience and leave satisfied whenever they interact with your call centre. This improves brand reputation and reinforces the customer’s decision to do business with your brand.
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