Estimating the effectiveness of your contact center operations requires looking at resources such as time, labor, and technology. On top of that, contact center productivity also hinges on two factors, agent motivation, and tools and environment they work in. As the name implies, agent motivation involves the human factor, and it determines whether employees do their job proactively to provide the very best service or go about their tasks mechanically and just do the bare minimum. The second factor is more straightforward as it is all about the technology deployed in the contact center and can either uplift or hamper productivity.
While there are several ways to get a quick snapshot of your operational performance, it is always better to get into the specifics by establishing the right consumer service metrics of your business. Below are some key metrics that help quickly identify and fix your contact center’s weak points, determine client satisfaction, and track agent performance metrics, which all combine to form a comprehensive image of your contact center’s performance.
1. Standard call duration
Looking at the standard call duration helps verify trends or patterns, such as common reasons for peak call times or long call sessions. By analyzing and understanding the standard call duration, contact centers can enhance their overall efficiency, improve customer service, and ensure a positive and seamless experience for both customers and agents. Calculating this duration involves dividing the total billable time of all calls received by the total number of calls.
2. Missed calls
This refers to all missed or unanswered calls that are caused by various reasons, such as:
- Customers lose interest or become impatient, so they hang up before an agent receives the call.
- The customer is placed in a queue or put on hold and hangs up during the waiting process.
- When customers are redirected and do not leave a message.
Studies have determined that approximately 85% of customers will not call back if their calls are left unanswered, so it is vital to keep missed call rates as low as possible. Otherwise, consider working on changes as soon as possible and improve your calling process, tools, or the number of in-house agents.
3. Response time
Response time calculates the average time it takes for agents to pick up their call, and it is among the best metrics for understanding and measuring agent productivity in a call center. Like missed calls, this metric should ideally be low, as high numbers mean that customers are stuck for too long on hold and your agents are not meeting their targets. Customers that experience long average wait times lead to a bad start when their call finally gets through and significantly reduce the chance that agents manage to provide a positive customer journey from start to end.
As such, it is vital to identify issues hindering your agents from connecting to calls faster. By listening to agents’ feedback, asking questions, and reviewing agent tickets can provide valuable insights. Getting enough data to get to the root of long response times may take time, in the interim, so it is best to consider quick solutions such as upgrading work tools and conducting additional customer service training to make improvements , no matter how small they may be.
4. Consumer satisfaction score (CSAT Score)
After the call with an agent, it is common practice to ask customers for a quick survey to rate their satisfaction with the service. This subjective score is invaluable because it sets a premium on how shareholders perceive your agents’ capabilities. Hence, every contact center spares no effort in keeping these scores high as it is one of the most telling signs that their operations deliver results.
5. First call resolution (FCR) rate
First call resolution rate or first contact resolution rate measures a contact center’s ability to resolve customer inquiries or concerns the first time they reach out for assistance on that specific issue. A successful FCR would mean that customers are satisfied after one call and no longer need to do any follow-ups with their issues. The industry standard of a good FCR rate is generally around 70-79%, which means anything below that requires considerable improvements as customers are not getting their problems addressed quickly.
Conclusion
Since customers will always prefer to talk to a person about their concerns over any other option, customer service remains a must for businesses. And since productivity and profitability are tied together from a business perspective, it is only natural that they keep a close eye on their contact center productivity. Hopefully, the contents above offer a good starting point for measuring contact center productivity, which inherently revolves around the agents themselves.
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