What Are the Best Contact Center KPIs for Your Operation?

There is a laundry list of items to keep track of in your call center. However it’s important to know how to identify specific key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor as they can directly impact the overall customer experience. The more you understand which metrics your organization will benefit from the most, the more you can optimize your call center logistics and in turn, your customers’ overall experience.

Depending on the call center environment, there can be a variety of metrics to consider and knowing where to start can be overwhelming. To make it easier, we’ve compiled a list of insights from industry experts, outlining the most important contact center KPIs to implement for your operation to succeed in today’s market. Enjoy!

1) First Call Resolution Rate

“To drive customer satisfaction there should be a clear definition of first-contact resolution and the opportunity to provide customers with better processes in response to their needs. It is essential for managers to look at how efficient their contact center’s current processes are by identifying any existing weaknesses in first-contact resolution.  A focus on speed of delivery can often mean contact center agents have far less interaction with customers which can result in them feeling less valued and can remove the personal aspect from conversations.”

(Source: Call Centre Helper)

2) Service Level and Response Times

“Service level and response time are classic metrics, and they’re fundamental to effective management of the contact center and the customer experience. These metrics tell you how accessible the center is to customers, how many agents are needed to provide efficient service or how your center’s service compares to others in your industry.”

(Source: ICMI)

3) Track Overall Customer Satisfaction

“It may sound overly simplistic, but one of the best ways to measure the customer journey is to just ask!  But, as outlined in a Client Heartbeat blog post, it’s important not to view customer satisfaction metrics based on individual interactions but instead on multiple interactions that can provide a more comprehensive view of the customer experience.

Think about it: If you only measure customer satisfaction based off individual interactions, how do you know how happy a customer is with the entire experience you deliver? Was he happy before a bad experience? Is he happy now, after you made up for a bad experience?”

(Source: CallMiner)

4) Self Service Accessibility

“It helps enhance service efficiency, and thus also cuts costs. It also helps agents to use their skills for assisting customers facing complex issues. Certain contact centers lure customers to self-service but totally miss treating them with the relevant features.

Many call centers conduct surveys on customer experience after a self-service and gather feedback. Surveys surely are good methods to understand how customers feel about self-service metrics, even though it is not the most definitive or proactive mode of measuring the self-service option.”

(Source: CRMXchange)

5) Abandoned Rate of Calls

“By analyzing the abandon rate, a contact center can ascertain if measures such as ring-backs are necessary whereby a customer puts themselves in the queue and requests a call back from an agent. Moreover, abandon rates help to optimize resource; flexible working staff, sometimes even from other areas of the business, can help support and cover peak periods, for example first thing in the morning before work, or at lunch hours.

Using the existing infrastructure, these staffing options can help handle the peaks and troughs and the contact center results can feed into the bigger picture of the overall business plan.”

(Source: MyCustomer)

6) Call Quality

“An attempt to quantify the elements of a successful call. Standard elements vary based on industry but typically include call openings, call closings and asking if further assistance is required. What it’s best for: Can be customized to incorporate key terms for your call center.”

(Source: CustomerThink)

7) Wait Time for Callers

“No one wants to wait in a queue for a long period of time. Thus, in order to ensure your callers’ wait time is within an acceptable range – and customer satisfaction is as well – you must keep track of average time in queue. This KPI is the total time callers wait in call queues divided by the total number of calls answered by agents. It is a great indicator of whether or not your team is providing their callers with the service they deserve.”

(Source: Talkdesk)

Final Thoughts

With over half of consumers expecting more from customer service than they did a year ago, it is becoming increasingly more important to have customer-centric metrics in place.

As the above list outlines, contact centers can position themselves to meet these expectations by tracking both customer-centric KPIs and productivity KPIs.

While there are quite a few metrics to choose from, understanding which metrics work best for your call center is imperative. We hope this list will help you decide which metrics work best for your call center and customer needs.

Image Credit: ©iStockphoto.com/BilevichOlga