As the old saying goes, 'you can't manage what you can't measure'.
With the abundance of resources now that are now available to track nearly every interaction, contact centers are adopting principles and procedures that lend to the continuous improvement revolution that originated in manufacturing and has since reached telecommunications. Contact center managers are no longer wondering what data they should be tracking and, instead, are inundated with a sea of statistics. This only adds to the complexity of a contact center manager's day as they now have to discern which metrics are most important for their business unit.
For this reason, we've compiled some of the most widely recognized contact center metrics. Beyond a mere definition, we've added business-level details that will let you know why each metric is important and what specific drivers are associated with each to give you the context you need to make real-time decisions that can immediately benefit your bottom line.
Abandoned Call Rate
What is Abandoned Call Rate?
Shrinkage is the term used to describe calls that have been dropped or abandoned by the customer -- in other words, calls a business doesn't receive.
Why is Abandoned Call Rate important?
Shrinkage has been estimated as anywhere between 6.2% and 12% of typical contact center transactions. For some businesses, this is an acceptable cost to pay in order for increased efficiency, communications bandwidth, and customer satisfaction.
What drives Abandoned Call Rate?
Shrinkage costs contact centers millions of dollars in the U.S. each year -- a far bigger problem than any other for the contact center industry. In fact, recent research suggests that losses due to shrinkage represent as much as 2.5 percent of total sales in some industries.
How do you calculate Abandoned Call Rate?
Shrinkage is a term used in business to describe items calls by the organization that should have been handled. This diminishes the overall profitability of the company. In most contact centers, shrinkage refers to calls that are lost and not logged into the system properly or reported correctly by agents. As with any business, losing data or otherwise failing to report it correctly can impact the overall health and profitability of the organization.
Agent Attrition Rate
What is Agent Attrition Rate?
Contact center attrition refers to the number of employees that stop working at a contact center. This number is normally high, and it continues to rise as more agents leave their jobs. Agent attrition rate can be used to measure how well the management team is managing the employees, and how well they are treating them. You can see how your contact center stacks up against others in regards to agent attrition rate by comparing numbers every month. A low agent attrition rate means that you have done a good job at keeping your agents engaged.
Why is Agent Attrition Rate important?
Contact center attrition rate is a combination of voluntary separation and involuntary loss. It will correlate closely with other quality factors such as First Call Resolution. Recognizing that most contact centers would like to prevent involuntary separation, the most frequent way to make a positive change in your attrition rate is to make improvements in First Call Resolution which significantly lowers involuntary losses.
What drives Agent Attrition Rate?
An alarming trend among contact centers is the typical annual attrition rate of 25-40% caused by agent burnout. This statistic poses a direct and negative impact on the overall performance of contact centers, especially in smaller organizations with limited resources.
How do you calculate Agent Attrition Rate?
Attrition rate is the percent of full-time agents who leave your contact center in a given time period. You calculate this by subtracting the number of new hires from the number of agents who left in that particular time period. The result is divided by the total number of full time agents. The resulting number is then multiplied by 100.
Agent Engagement
What is Agent Engagement?
Agent Engagement is a measure of the level of interest expressed by agents in their work. Also known as call-center quality and performance, agent engagement can be measured through such factors as: commuting time to the workplace, average length of shifts for phone agents, frequency with which employees ask for a transfer from one contact center to another or quit outright.
Why is Agent Engagement important?
Agent engagement is an important issue in contact centers as it is the central component to the achievement of organizational goals. It requires more than merely giving your employees pleasant jobs and enough freedom, autonomy and tools to perform them. The ability to engage your agents is critical to your success as a contact center manager.
What drives Agent Engagement?
Agent Engagement is driven by a combination of company culture and management tools that promote job satisfaction, job performance and positive customer experience through engagement. Contact center managers will increase Agent Engagement by creating an environment where contact center agents feel supported, have a high level of autonomy, and feel incentivized to work together to achieve common goals.
How do you calculate Agent Engagement?
Agent engagement is the level of a support agent’s activity, calculated as a numeric score that ranges from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). This engagement score can be optionally assigned to each agent ‘per contact’ and used to prioritize technical issues. The score does not take into account agent skills or other qualitative factors such as caller type. Summarizing or comparing individual agents or departments will give you an indications of where to allocate resources to increase agent engagement.
Agent Schedule Adherence
What is Agent Schedule Adherence?
A key indicator of an effective contact center system is agent schedule adherence. This metric measures employee adherence to a prescribed work schedule, and the ability to accurately predict employee work schedules across multiple shifts. Poor scheduling can lead to high turnover rates, low performance scores, and poor customer service scores. Breaking down the overall business objectives for any given contact center, this metric helps organizations see how their individual agents are performing in relation to best practice standards and expectations.
Why is Agent Schedule Adherence important?
Agent schedule adherence refers to the adherence of agents to their schedule, which is an important metric as it focuses on one of the most important metrics in our contact center, efficiency. In general, this metric is focused on ensuring that agents stick to their schedule so that it matches the expected number of calls each agent must take in order to meet SLA's and business objectives. Contact centers will have differing levels of adherence for different days and time periods during the week.
What drives Agent Schedule Adherence?
We believe that any contact center that achieves a high level of adherence will most likely do so by looking beyond traditional time management methods and addressing elements such as the agent's overall workload, the number of open shifts created by managers and operators, and the various tasks assigned to agents. The more agents are involved in activities other than work, the greater the compliance risk.
How do you calculate Agent Schedule Adherence?
Adherence is the percentage of an agent's scheduled hours worked. If an agent has a schedule of 9AM-5PM, and attends work from 8AM to 5:30PM on that day, adherence for that agent would be 89%.
Agent Turnover
What is Agent Turnover?
Agent Turnover is the rate of staff exiting the workforce within a given time period. This can be for reasons, such as retirement or resignation. Agents leaving the organization for any reason are included in this turnover number.
Why is Agent Turnover important?
Agent turnover is the rate at which agents leave a contact center. When there is an increase in agent turnover, agents are more likely to not show up for work or call in sick. What does this mean for the business? When this happens it can lead to response time increases, higher costs per contact and lost opportunities to sell new products and services.
What drives Agent Turnover?
Drivers of agent turnover include: negative relationships with supervisors; cliques and social grouping within the contact center; agents not able to contribute positively to the team, ineffective training, high stress level due to work pace, lack of recognition, lack of career development opportunities, limited amenities or perks at contact center such as on-site cafeterias and gyms, and fear of losing a job.
How do you calculate Agent Turnover?
Agents can quit or be fired from the contact center. Agent Turnover is a ratio that accounts for both quits and terminations. The calculation is fairly simple: (# of quits X 100%) / (# of quits + # of terminations).
Agent Utilization
What is Agent Utilization?
Agent Utilization is the total number of available agent talk time per hour divided by agent scheduled talk time per hour. It can also be thought of as how much a contact center agent is being utilized, where a high number equals better utilization.
Why is Agent Utilization important?
Agent utilization is a metric that tells us how effective agents are at answering calls. This metric informs how agents are prioritizing their work, and if they are wastefully spending time on tasks that aren’t as useful.
What drives Agent Utilization?
Efficiency and effectiveness of contact center operations are built on key metrics such as Agent Utilization. The volume of calls answered by an Agent, and how many Agents are handling customer calls at any given time, directly drive cost per contact.
How do you calculate Agent Utilization?
Agent Utilization is a Contact Center Performance Metric that measures how effectively you are using your agents. This metric is calculated computationally and can be determined by the number of calls each agent was working on concurrently, as well as the number of calls each agent handled in an hour. Agent Utilization = Number of concurrent calls / Number of handled calls per hour.
Attendance
What is Attendance?
Without attendance management, contact center managers are out of the loop when comes to their employee's hours. By integrating some form of automated time tracking into your ticketing system, agents can view the status of their colleague's shifts and reschedule any missed employment at the touch of a button. By using effective time tracking, businesses can realize a 20% increase in productivity by being able to manage their workforce more effectively.
Why is Attendance important?
To determine an employee's eligibility for bonus or eligibility to request/receive time off, attendance is a key component of any progressive business. A company can run at its highest level by ensuring that employees are allotted a certain amount of time for vacation and sick leave. These individuals who consistently miss work without ample notice, or show up five minutes late and throw off the entire operation strive to turn a productive environment into one of chaos.
What drives Attendance?
What drives attendance? When asked that question we find that the most important factor in determining attendance is whether someone needs a paycheck. But there are other factors as well.
How do you calculate Attendance?
The calculation of attendance is based on the work schedule. The number of hours worked by a staff member divided by the number of scheduled hours per week multiplied by the number of weeks these hours were worked equals the average weekly attendance.
Average Call Abandonment Rate
What is Average Call Abandonment Rate?
What is average call abandonment rate? It's an industry standard of time percentage that a customer waits in queue before hanging up, before any representative answers; also known as ACAR. It is calculated by the number of callers who hang up during the hold period divided by the total time of all calls taken.
Why is Average Call Abandonment Rate important?
Average call abandonment rate represents the average percentage of calls that are terminated by a customer prior to the customer contact being answered by an agent. This metric provides a comprehensive measurement of the level of service a company is providing customers by measuring how satisfied customers are depending on the amount of effort they have to put into getting the help they need.
What drives Average Call Abandonment Rate?
A contact center’s average call abandonment rate is a critical factor in evaluating the quality of a company’s contact center and can directly impact customer satisfaction. Customers will inevitably abandon calls to customer service departments, whether they are unable to navigate the automated voice response system, are put on hold for too long, or simply because of bad customer experiences.
How do you calculate Average Call Abandonment Rate?
Use this formula: For a given month, the ACAR is calculated as the total number of abandoned calls divided by the total number of call attempts multiplied by 100 and expressed as percent. Abandoned Calls are the sum of all calls for which the customer abandons while in queue, up to 30 seconds before the first live contact with an agent. Call attempts are the sum of all calls which reach an agent.
Average Call Length
What is Average Call Length?
Average call length represents the period of time that a customer is on the phone with a business before they request to escalate. It can be measured in seconds, and if the number of times that a customer expresses dissatisfaction with a company’s product or service during a call, it could be considered an indicator of how satisfied customers are.
Why is Average Call Length important?
The average length of a call in your contact center is important because it can be used to calculate staffing levels and production requirements. Call length forecasts can be calculated based on the number of calls you expect per hour. It is also useful data for sales managers when projecting new customer growth and average order value.
What drives Average Call Length?
Many different factors can affect how long your callers are on the phone with you, including their issue type, what department they're calling from, and even the weather.
How do you calculate Average Call Length?
Average call length is calculated by dividing total call time, or the sum of all call times, by the number of calls.
Average Call Transfer Rate
What is Average Call Transfer Rate?
Average call transfer rate is a metric that you can use to measure your contact center 's efficiency in transferring calls to the appropriate agent or department. A high average call transfer rate may mean that agents are being overly efficient by quickly identifying an optimal match for customer needs, but could also mean that your contact center is inefficient by making customers wait too long in the queue to reach the right agent (by looking up instead of simply transferring).
Why is Average Call Transfer Rate important?
An important KPI for the contact center is Average Call Transfer Rate because this metric can help a company rate its performance in comparison to prior periods and benchmark it against its competitors. This figure can be used to determine how efficient agents are at transferring calls, and gives insight into agent quality.
What drives Average Call Transfer Rate?
The efficiency of the agents in transferring calls to the appropriate destination is a very important part of Contact Center Operations. An average transfer rate of more than 80% is considered good for most contact centers, however, many contact centers have transfer rates as high as 95 percent. Having higher transfer rates directly depends on efficient and effective agent skills. An agent must correctly identify who to transfer the caller (including the correct extension number) and clearly communicate that information so that the caller understands and is comfortable with their next course of action.
How do you calculate Average Call Transfer Rate?
Average call transfer rate is the percentage of calls in which the caller transferred the line to someone else or hung up before reaching a customer service representative.
Average Speed of Answer
What is Average Speed of Answer?
In contact center management, average speed of answer (ASA) is a measure of performance that represents the average length of time it takes for a customer service representative to answer a call. Contact centers have traditionally used ASA as a performance metric due to the ease of measurement, and because ASA impacts the customer experience. A low ASA means fewer customers are put on hold, which creates a better customer experience, while a high ASA might indicate that there is excessive call volume or poor call handling skills amongst agents.
Why is Average Speed of Answer important?
In the contact center industry, Average Speed of Answer is one of the most important metrics. It can be used to determine whether your customer support agents are answering calls in a timely manner. While it doesn't inherently provide a true root cause analysis, by simply identifying a low ASA you will be able to consider other factors that may be contributing to a delayed answer time.
What drives Average Speed of Answer?
Average Speed of Answer (ASA) is impacted by a number of variables including the call length and the number of interactions per call, or how many areas were dialed during the call.
How do you calculate Average Speed of Answer?
The average speed of answer metric is difficult to calculate in an ideal world, due to the challenges of calculating the time from when both the customer and agent speak during a call. However, using general terminology, we can provide a definition. The standard definition for calculating average speed of answer only counts the total amount of time that the agent spends speaking on a call as average speed of answer, and not customer talk time.
Average Talk Time
What is Average Talk Time?
Average talk time is the average time a caller is on the phone with a customer service representative, from the start of conversation until they hang up. This time is calculated by taking the total amount of time spent over all calls and dividing that number by the number of calls. A higher average talk time is generally regarded as better, though other metrics are important as well.
Why is Average Talk Time important?
Average Talk Time is the core measurement for contact center performance. The one metric that ultimately drives Quality, Customer Satisfaction and Revenue. For this reason, it is imperative that your implementations utilize a call tracking system capable of calculating Average Talk Time. Without measuring Average Talk Time, you are not measuring contact center efficiency, nor its impact on revenue and profitability.
What drives Average Talk Time?
Contact center staff can determine the amount of average talk time by knowing the average amount of calls that are in queue and the percentage of those that will remain on hold due to high voicemail message volumes. Call taking agents can also factor out external influences that may interfere with this metric.
How do you calculate Average Talk Time?
Average Talk Time (ATT) is the primary measure of average talk time or length of call and what it measures is: the total number of minutes used by customers divided by the number of calls which can be either inbound or outbound. It is used to record the average amount of time a customer spends on our system for one incoming or outgoing call.
Average Time in Queue
What is Average Time in Queue?
Average Time in Queue tells you how long in minutes the average customer's call is held in the queue before being answered by a contact center agent.
Why is Average Time in Queue important?
The average time in queue displays the average amount of time the customer has been waiting in queue to be served. It is an important metric because if customers can not get a representatives attention quickly they will become frustrated and hang up. This is even more apparent when a customer does not even know how long they will be required to wait as is the case with queue time information that is unavailable or unavailable in a timely manner.
What drives Average Time in Queue?
Contact center operators monitor a number of variables in order to help them allocate staff and ensure effectiveness. The first of these contact center productivity metrics is Average Time in Queue, which is simply the average amount of time telephone calls spend waiting to be answered. There are a number of metrics that are sensitive to the length of time calls wait to be answered including the following:
How do you calculate Average Time in Queue?
Average Time in Queue is calculated by dividing total waiting time by total call attempts to this site. For example if you have 1 call attempt with an Average Time in Queue of 60 minutes, that would translate into an Average Time in Queue of 60 minutes / 1 call attempt = 60 minutes.
Average Handle Time
What is Average Handle Time?
Average handle time (AHT) is the average time it takes a customer support team to handle each call, email or chat session which comes in. There is a close relationship between AHT and Customer Complaint Ratio (CCR).
Why is Average Handle Time important?
Average handle time is important for a variety of reasons. It is the best indicator of the efficiency with which callers are being directed to an agent. Time from receipt of a call to connection to an agent is critical but it does not provide data about the caller’s problem, whether the caller got the information they needed and how they rated the service. As a way of improving overall effectiveness, average handle time should be analyzed by individual agents and compared with their goal times.
What drives Average Handle Time?
Perhaps the most critical factor that drives average handle time and an agent's productivity is call volume. The greater the number of calls waiting in queue, the longer each call lasts (most people are less than patient when they have to wait on hold for a long time). The other principal influence on average handle time is how easy it is for agents to find help and answers.
How do you calculate Average Handle Time?
Average handle time is a metric designed to monitor customer service and corporate agents achieve Business Excellence (BE). We apply different rates for each of the different categories of contact center agents. The average handle time metric can be calculated by summing the total handling time for all the calls in Intercom system, divide it by the total number of calls.
Average Hold Time
What is Average Hold Time?
Average Hold Time is the duration of time spent on hold by callers before their call is handled. Average Hold Time can be expressed in milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, or even days depending on your organization's business model. It is synonymous with On-hold Time.
Why is Average Hold Time important?
Average hold time illustrates the amount of time customers are kept on hold while waiting to speak with a customer service representative. It is important for tracking purposes, as well as allowable limits set by business processes.
What drives Average Hold Time?
Lowering average hold time reduces queue time. Contact center agents report that reduced queue times increase customer satisfaction and decrease phone abandonment rate. Higher customer satisfaction means increased sales.
How do you calculate Average Hold Time?
Average hold time is calculated by adding up the total amount of time all customers have waited on hold and dividing it by the total number of customer calls. A strong contact center will tend to have a low Average Hold Time, as it is an indication of how efficiently agents are responding to customer needs.
Average After Call Work Time
What is Average After Call Work Time?
The average period of time between when a customer calls and when the agent is available again to answer another call after exiting an interaction with a customer.
Why is Average After Call Work Time important?
This metric helps to understand how much time agents spends on non-billable activities (e.g. taking a bathroom break, drinking coffee). Ensuring metrics around ACW are low is key to maximizing overall efficiency within your contact center.
What drives Average After Call Work Time?
The After Call Work Time is an important indicator of customer success for agents, and an indicator of agent performance for managers and administrators. Teams with low handle time, defined as the time between the end of a call and the start of the next call, tend to have higher ACW.
How do you calculate Average After Call Work Time?
Average After Call Work Time is a calculated metric that uses the formula: ((Total Calls Answered) / (Calls Queued)) * (Unique Hours Worked).
Call Arrival Rate
What is Call Arrival Rate?
The Call Arrival Rate compares the number of calls received during a period of time with the number of available service representatives. Call Arrival Rate is often used to assess staff’s performance when it is low. High C/A Ratio indicates that there are many queries being made.
Why is Call Arrival Rate important?
The Call Arrival Rate gives an indication of caller traffic patterns. The statistics show how closely a center is hitting its target rate.
What drives Call Arrival Rate?
The number of calls arriving at a contact center will vary, but the higher the rate, the greater the work load for agents. Requiring shorter lengths of stays per call will help drive a high arrival rate.
How do you calculate Call Arrival Rate?
Call Arrival Rate (CAR) is the number of calls which arrive at your service desk over a specified period of time. CAR is calculated in terms of percentage which is 10 calls in any minute or 60 calls in any 5 minutes. The formula to calculate CAR is this: Number of Calls divided by Time in duration.
Call Quality
What is Call Quality?
Call Quality is the ability of an agent to attain and maintain a level of service performance that conforms to company standards at all times. This metric is not simply measured by how often an agent receives customer complaints but instead reflects how well agents consistently meet service levels industry standards and expectations. Call Quality is achieved when service is consistent, continuous, and compliant with quality systems; it should be a given that all agents will deliver continuous quality in their performance.
Why is Call Quality important?
Call quality is important because quality service builds confidence in your brand and helps to drive customer loyalty. Poor call quality erodes the confidence of your customers, which in turn, negatively affects retention.
What drives Call Quality?
Call quality is dependent on many factors, including the end-user PC and its connection to the Internet, the voice gateway that ultimately connects the call to your company’s Voice-over-IP (VoIP) network, and ultimately the voice quality end-to-end.
How do you calculate Call Quality?
Call quality is the service variable that describes customers' perception of a voice call's value, and the experience they have with your customer contact center when performing tasks associated with it. The level of customers' satisfaction determines the retention rate of your clients. Call quality can be calculated by using measurement methods such as an ACD feedback score, channel factors, and customer satisfaction scores.
Call Volume
What is Call Volume?
Call volume is the number of telephone calls received by a contact center. Call volume includes both incoming as well as outgoing calls. While a certain number of incoming calls are inevitable, an organization’s highest priority must always be placed on servicing its customers.
Why is Call Volume important?
Call Volume is important because it measures the frequency of calls a contact center agent dealt with in a specific time period. The more frequently that a contact center agent deals with calls, the busier the center is. Call volume can be measured or quantified in a few different ways, such as by the number of contacts handled per hour, number of contacts handled per day, or even the average number of contacts handled per week.
What drives Call Volume?
There can be multiple factors that would drive call volumes for your contact center. For example a ticketing system can require agents to help decrease the call volume through conversations with customers. A scheduling system may increase calls for a service function because it would allow better service scheduling. A new product introduction may trigger a higher volume of calls for order entry and questions about the products features or functions.
How do you calculate Call Volume?
Call Volume is defined as the total number of incoming and outgoing calls over a specified time frame, and can be measured in terms of Minutes of Use (MOU) or Average Call Density.
Callback Messaging
What is Callback Messaging?
Callback Messaging allows a company to setup one or more pre-recorded voice messages for an incoming call that either forwards immediately or to an IVR system. These custom messages can be attached to a campaign, functional group, task or contact. If a call is missed and remains in the queue, then Callback Messaging is automatically invoked after the number of failed attempts specified by the company.
Why is Callback Messaging important?
Having a Callback Messaging system generates more sales for your organization by increasing the probability of customers seeing and hearing your marketing messages multiple times.
What drives Callback Messaging?
The common reasons for callback messaging is to ensure that qualified leads are not lost due to incomplete responses or incorrect information.
How do you calculate Callback Messaging?
Callback Messaging is inbound and outbound messaging associated with the need to return a call to a respondent from a live agent. For example, a survey respondent not being able to complete the survey within the allotted time.
Calls Answered Per Hour
What is Calls Answered Per Hour?
Calls Answered Per Hour (CAPH) is an industry term for measuring the number of calls answered by a contact center at a given time. The measurement represents the actual number of calls that can be answered in an hour, regardless of the actual amount of agents available.
Why is Calls Answered Per Hour important?
Calls Answered Per Hour is an important contact center metric that is used to measure the efficiency of a contact center. It can be calculated by dividing the total number of calls answered by a contact center by the number of hours worked in an hour. Some organizations have implemented policies allowing agents to use breaks to answer calls and reduce their Calls Deferred Queue while effectively increasing their Calls answered per hour ratio.
What drives Calls Answered Per Hour?
Service levels, sales performance, and profitability can all be enhanced with correctly-managed contact center agents. ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) data is critical to measuring important metrics for agents, such as Calls Answered Per Hour. It’s equally critical to knowing which SIP parameters drive calls answered per hour.
How do you calculate Calls Answered Per Hour?
You can easily calculate Calls Answered Per Hour using the CSAT report and Division column. In the example below, there are columns for Calls Answered Per Hour, Calls/Hour, % Answered as well as additional fields for other formulas such as [(Answered+ Abandoned)/Total] * 100.
Cost Per Call
What is Cost Per Call?
Cost per Call is how much you pay each time your customer calls your company. Cost per call is calculated by dividing contact center cost or contact center expense by the number of calls made. It is also known as Average Cost Per Call.
Why is Cost Per Call important?
At the heart of every contact center is the cost of a call. Understanding the cost of a call is fundamental to planning and managing your contact center activities. The most common cost measure used in contact centers is Cost Per Call or CPM (Call Handling Time). Typical expenses for a contact center include labor, technology, equipment and facilities.
What drives Cost Per Call?
Every contact center is different, and each one has a different Cost Per Call. Here are some factors that can affect Cost Per Call: Agent education and training, Information provided to the agent on the call, Processing speed of the queue, Velocity of calls in/out-bound, Big data integration, Volume of data mined for making decisions on next best call behavior.
How do you calculate Cost Per Call?
This formula will determine the total cost you pay per call. First, divide each of your individual answers by the total number of calls. Then use that figure to find out the average cost of each call. (average cost per call) X number of calls Finally, subtract that figure from your total cost. The result is your Cost Per Call
Cost Per Contact
What is Cost Per Contact?
There’s no question that contact with customers is important, but what’s even more important is keeping those contacts from becoming too costly. Cost per contact (CPC) is an ideal cost management system for telecommunications and contact center companies, as well as other industries.
Why is Cost Per Contact important?
The Cost Per Contact metric is a standard way used to quantify the total cost associated with each client interaction. This normally includes labor and non-labor costs, such as sales expenses (commissions, salaries), operational expenses (contact center hardware, software, outside services), and other ancillary costs. The total cost can be broken down by type of contact channel, or more typically for this function, by the segmentation of cost within each.
What drives Cost Per Contact?
The Cost Per Contact metric is a key consideration among contact center professionals because it gives them insight into how each KPB is performing under the three criteria, or legs of the KPB model (Ports, Calls, and Speed). Every industry has unique KPBs that allow for seamless integration into the customer journey.
How do you calculate Cost Per Contact?
The Cost Per Contact formula, or C.P.C., is often used as a benchmark in different sectors of the contact center industry. Rapid changes in technology have led to an increased reliance on ways of measuring productivity using graphs and tables. How do you calculate Cost Per Contact? C.P.C is a cost accounting method used in telecommunications, utilities, and service industries to report the annual costs required for customer (or client) service applications like contact centers. Calculations will vary by the number of methods you have available for a customer to contact you, and the capability of your staff to track across each method.
Customer Experience
What is Customer Experience?
Customer Experience refers to the perception by customers of your brand and the relationship that they have with your business. It’s a holistic experience based on 75% emotional and 25% rational elements – the emotional elements are determined by how customers feel about you and your business, while rational elements involve assessing how customers are being treated. Understanding these emotional elements is critical in making decisions about improving customer experience, including identifying which touch points within the customer journey are most important.
Why is Customer Experience important?
There is a direct correlation between customer experience and customer lifetime value (CLV), and a strong relationship between improving profitability and improved customer experience. With the constant development of technologies, your customers expect an extraordinary level of service. After all, they have grown accustomed to the personal touch—and because millions of companies offer similar products around the globe, it has become increasingly important for companies to set themselves apart from their competition when it comes to providing a great customer experience.
What drives Customer Experience?
Business leaders and customer experts agree that high-performing contact centers can deliver an extraordinary customer experience worth every penny of the call. Contact center workers should focus on understanding the customer’s needs, mobilizing information, and creating value for all parties involved. The quality of the person-to-person connection is bound to create loyalty between companies and their customers.
How do you calculate Customer Experience?
To calculate CX, take a company's quality of listening and responding to customers, add its responsiveness to customer complaints plus subtract the time it takes to resolve them, multiply by the interaction of customer and employee--taking into account the tone, quality and information communicated--then balance this out by assessing the company's ethics related to its customers.
Customer Satisfaction Score
What is Customer Satisfaction Score?
The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSS) is a measure of customer satisfaction with a company's products and/or services. For simplicity, it can be thought of as the percentage of the overall sample that was satisfied with the company's products and/or services.
Why is Customer Satisfaction Score important?
Customer satisfaction is the ultimate measure of whether a contact center experience was positive or negative. CSAT is the percentage of customers who answered “definitely yes” to the question: “Would you recommend this company to a friend or colleague?” A high CSAT score means the customers had a pleasurable customer experience where problems were solved quickly and efficiently. This helps reinforce new customer loyalty, builds trust and consumer confidence and prevents negative word-of-mouth that can lead to additional expenses.
What drives Customer Satisfaction Score?
Satisfied Customers are the cornerstone of Customer Satisfaction Score. Customers who have positive experience with your agents on the phone or via email will influence your score.
How do you calculate Customer Satisfaction Score?
Customer Satisfaction Score is a measurement of how well an organization meets or exceeds the expectations of its customers. It is calculated by taking a proportion of all positive responses (satisfied, very satisfied and delighted) in relation to the number of total responses from customers across a range of service areas. In other words, if 25% of customers said they were satisfied with a company's products while 75% said they were dissatisfied, then that company would have a CSS of 25%.
Customer Retention
What is Customer Retention?
To retain a customer is to gain revenue from that customer. The customer retention rate is the percentage of current customers that are retained over time. It is estimated that a 5% improvement in customer retention can lead to a 20-60% improvement in profits, depending on business size and nature of the business.
Why is Customer Retention important?
An important aspect of customer retention, customer service has a direct impact on the profitability of a company. A high percentage of repeat customers translates into higher profits for firms at all levels. High levels of customer retention are associated with customer satisfaction, which in turn is directly linked to positive financial performance. Positive financial performance leads to higher stock market values.
What drives Customer Retention?
Customer Retention is a key performance indicator for all businesses, and the contact center that retains customers is an essential tool to accomplish it. Customer Retention can be defined as a set of strategic and operational programs to drive customer retention by ensuring customer satisfaction. Retained customers are more profitable, more emotionally connected to your brand and more likely to share their experiences with others.
How do you calculate Customer Retention?
A contact center is a facility which houses personnel who handle incoming telephone calls for client or customer service purposes. contact centers are operated by all types of businesses, from banks to health care providers to airlines. Customer retention is the ultimate goal for most businesses when they set up a contact center, so as you can imagine, the two go hand in hand.
Customer Churn Rate
What is Customer Churn Rate?
Customer Churn Rate means the annualized customer loss rate, reflecting the ratio of customers lost during the period to total customers at the beginning of the period plus new customers acquired during the period. Customer Churn rate measures changes in customer loyalty. A low rate means that a company is doing a good job of retaining its customers.
Why is Customer Churn Rate important?
Customer Churn Rate is important because it allows firms to measure the performance of individual contact centers. The rate indicates how many customers cancel their service or leave a company, which provides insight for companies to see why and where they should improve.
What drives Customer Churn Rate?
Customer churn is the rate at which customers discontinue their use of products or services offered by companies in a specific time period. The reason for leaving may be directly associated with the product itself, or due to dissatisfaction about other factors such as price, the company's ethics, or interactions with customer service.
How do you calculate Customer Churn Rate?
Customer Churn Rate is calculated by dividing the total number of customers that left your company by the total number of customers at the start of a given time period.
Escalation Rate
What is Escalation Rate?
Escalation rate is the number of calls a representative is required to answer/escalate per hour. Escalation rate is most commonly used in contact centers or contact centers, where it serves as a benchmark for performance evaluation and as a goal for customer service reps or contact center agents.
Why is Escalation Rate important?
Escalation rate is important because it determines how quickly a customer’s issue will be handled. Escalation rates allow a company to respond in a timely manner, which is important for customers who need their problems solved now. Escalation rates can also show a company’s attention toward its customers, as well as the company’s level of commitment.
What drives Escalation Rate?
Escalation Rate occurs when a support issue is passed on (escalated) to a more senior agent in another department. There are three common reasons for escalating a support issue: 1) the initial agent was unable to fix the issue, 2) the issue is an urgent customer request that needs immediate attention, or 3) the agent is unable to communicate with the customer or provide additional information on the problem and how it will be solved because of lack of access to key data sources.
How do you calculate Escalation Rate?
Escalation Rate is calculated as the number of Escalations in a given time period divided by the total number of calls for that same time period.
First Call Resolution
What is First Call Resolution?
First Call Resolution (FCR) is a definition for any call that is resolved during the first call to the technical support department. By resolving a customer's issue during the first call, FCR provides value to the customer and reduces overall support costs. The faster you intervene on a customer's behalf, the sooner you can help prevent further sales loss and reduce churn.
Why is First Call Resolution important?
First call resolution is the goal for a contact center representative to resolve a problem on the first phone call. There are many reasons why this is important. One main reason is: More efficient customer service—Most organizations don’t have the time, desire or money to let their customers run around from person to person gathering bits of information that should have been communicated to begin with. If a customer is given all the information they need on their first point of contact, a company can save big time.
What drives First Call Resolution?
A high First Call Resolution is very important for contact centers and especially for customer experience. FCR means that the customer calls, gets help from the center and is satisfied with support all in the same interaction. Calls handled by agents or scripts directly without interaction are not included in this rate. FCR figures can be influenced by Company Policy, Agents level of competence and skill, and Help Desk Center effectiveness - including the quality of software applications and technical infrastructure.
How do you calculate First Call Resolution?
First call resolution (FCR) represents the percentage of calls received by your contact center that are successfully answered first time by the service agent. FCR is calculated by summing up all calls with a First Call Resolution of 1 and dividing this quantity by the total number of live calls.
First Contact Resolution
What is First Contact Resolution?
The First Contact Resolution (FCR) benchmark is one of the key performance indicators (KPI) used to measure total customer experience. First contact resolution rates the percent of inbound calls which are resolved as a first contact resolution, without escalation. FCR is popularized since the rise of multimedia and Unified Communications, where the first point of contact may not be a call.
Why is First Contact Resolution important?
First Contact Resolution is a critical piece of customer satisfaction and is an industry standard for telephone support. When it was first introduced, it was measured in seconds. Now, with companies that work on very high volume applications, one second can mean the difference between keeping the customer and losing them to a competitor.
What drives First Contact Resolution?
First Contact Resolution (FCR) is the measure of how successfully an agent resolves a situation with a customer on the first contact, i.e. before referring to a supervisor or escalating to a new support resource. FCR measures the percentage of issues resolved on the first call and is typically reported as the % of calls closed while the customer remains on hold. FCR represents an important part of First Call Resolution.
How do you calculate First Contact Resolution?
First Contact Resolution is a metric used for measuring customer service effectiveness. FCR can be calculated by dividing the number of issues resolved by the first contact with a Customer Service agent.
Occupancy Rate
What is Occupancy Rate?
Occupancy rate is the proportion of seats filled to call agents workstations. It is usually measured as a ratio, for example, 80% means that for every 10 seats available in 20 contact center chairs, only 8 are occupied. Occupancy rates are indicators of service levels, efficiency and operational effectiveness. Having low occupancy rates may result in an insufficient number of agents finishing calls on time what leads to excessive overtime work for customer service representatives.
Why is Occupancy Rate important?
Occupancy rate is a key indicator that a contact center or contact center is running in an effective manner. A low occupancy rate means there are too many agents on staff.
What drives Occupancy Rate?
Occupancy Rate refers to the percentage of time that a contact center is operating, and it is usually calculated on a monthly basis and expressed as the total number of scheduled work hours divided by the sum of available workforce hours (i.e., agent, supervisor, manager, administrative or other staff). While it depends on a variety of factors, the most significant factor affecting the Occupancy Rate is Average Handle Time.
How do you calculate Occupancy Rate?
One of the most important factors in determining the cost of a contact center is finding the occupancy rate. The occupancy rate refers to the percentage of time that your center is operational and taking calls. There are two methods you can use to find the occupancy rate for your center: Percent Scheduled - divide the total number of available work hours by the total number of scheduled work hours. Percent Actual - divide the total number of staffed work hours by the total number of staffed hours
Percentage of Calls Blocked
What is Percentage of Calls Blocked?
The Percentage of Calls Blocked is the percentage of all calls handled by a contact center in the specified period that were blocked before the answer phase was initiated. This number represents issues that require a direct callback or re-dial.
Why is Percentage of Calls Blocked important?
The Percentage of Calls Blocked is a key metric in contact center performance evaluation. It allows you to measure the effectiveness of your agent’s efforts which directly contribute to providing exceptional customer care. A low percentage of calls blocked is directly related to the performance of the agent and the number of customer complaints.
What drives Percentage of Calls Blocked?
The technology behind percentage of calls blocked rates the contact center's ability to manage its time and resources. Processes such as real-time queue monitoring using predictive analytics are designed to reduce call blocking or decrease the length and frequency of queuing for customer service representatives. Being able to better schedule resources and respond to service cycles (high complaint periods, higher incoming call volumes) will lead to lower call blocking rates, which is a critical KPI used by management to determine and verify operational quality.
How do you calculate Percentage of Calls Blocked?
Percent of calls blocked is calculated by dividing the total number of calls blocked by the total number of calls answered and is represented as a percentage.
Repeat Call Rate
What is Repeat Call Rate?
Repeat call rate is when a customer calls back or returns to the same vendor to make a purchase. When it comes to consumer-facing companies, repeat call rate is one of many metrics used to track customers’ satisfaction and gauge future sales.
Why is Repeat Call Rate important?
The Repeat Call Rate is an indicator of customer service satisfaction. It measures the percentage of customers who make a second call regarding the same issue. In particular, it can be used as a general metric of service quality.
What drives Repeat Call Rate?
Repeat Call Rate (RCR) is one of the key performance indicators used to judge the efficiency of a contact center. It is generally based on the number of repeat calls an agent has, divided by the total number of customer contacts. In other words it measures how many times a customer contacted a contact center about a similar issue.
How do you calculate Repeat Call Rate?
Repeat Call Rate is the total number of times a customer called divided by the total number of customers over all service tiers.
Service Level
What is Service Level?
Service level is a promise of consistency of performance in a data center. It can be viewed as a contract between the provider and the customers that, if met, guarantees a certain minimum level of performance.
Why is Service Level important?
Service level is a key indicator of customer satisfaction because it has an influence on the Performance (quality), Flexibility and Availability.
What drives Service Level?
Service Level is a measurement against which you can gauge your entire organization. It is defined by the total percentage of customers you interact with that receive the level of service you've established as acceptable. For example, if the phone call is measured at 5 seconds and your Service Level Objective asks for calls to be answered within 15 seconds, contact center agents who answer calls in 12 seconds are providing 80% of their calls within Service Level objective for that sample. A Service Level objective gives you both tangible and intangible benefits.
How do you calculate Service Level?
Service level is calculated based on the number of contacts handled per hour. You can do this by determining the number of calls and units that are processed per hour.
Shrinkage
What is Shrinkage?
Shrinkage is an industry term used to describe contact center calls that are not answered or are redirected to the wrong person - and/or contact center calls that engage a customer but aren't completed.
Why is Shrinkage important?
To better understand and mitigate shrinkage requires the organizations to know the reasons behind the shrinkage. This will help in establishing a true picture of the size of a problem as well as explore methods that are best suited to prevent such shrinkage.
What drives Shrinkage?
Four organizational factors have the most profound impact on shrinkage. These factors are weak company culture, lack of strategic focus, loss of customer focus and operational weaknesses.
How do you calculate Shrinkage?
Shrinkage is determined by the difference between call volume at the beginning versus the end of a reporting period. The most common methods are first in, first out (FIFO) and last in, first out (LIFO).
Transfer Rate
What is Transfer Rate?
Transfer Rate is the percentage of service calls that are transferred from the initial call taker to another agent.
Why is Transfer Rate important?
Transfer rate is an important aspect of a contact center. It represents the number of callers who transfer from one team to another. It is an indicator of customer satisfaction and it is closely monitored by management. High transfer rates are especially negative to a contact center's performance because they can lead to longer wait times, as hold times on transfers may be considerable.
What drives Transfer Rate?
Transfers are a critical metric for contact centers. Knowing how many transfers from your contact center are happening and where they are being transferred to is essential to understanding what drives transfer rate.
How do you calculate Transfer Rate?
The transfer rate is the percentage of customers that “transfer” from one state to another. For example, let’s say you have 1000 calls in your backlog, and you handle 500 of them. You release 100 calls per day, or 4 days per week. So then you can calculate your transfer rate for each week this way: To get the weekly transfer rate, divide the number of calls that were released by the total number handled. This will give 2 calls released per call handled.
About the Author: Perry Price
