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How do you measure the level of service your contact center provides?
I'm curious to know how people measure the "level of service" that their contact center provides to their customers? Thoughts?
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4 Answers
Your contact center service metrics should consist of the following core metrics. These metrics are applicable to both inbound and outbound environments and sales and service organizations.
Intraday/Daily Metrics
Service Level/Response Time - Did your organization meet your metric targets of handling or resolving x% of interactions within a certain timeframe? If not, why?
Forecasted vs. Actual Interactions - Was your forecasted volume and handle time per interaction consistent with your forecast which then drives staffing
Average Handle Time - while several people in the industry feel that AHT is a metric that no longer matters, from a workload and staffing standpoint - it DOES matter. No matter how you run your center, AHT and Interaction volume is a key workload driver and must be accounted for in order to accurate staff your center to handle interactions in the time frame you target.
Required vs. Actual Staffing - how many FTEs were actually used today? How many did you plan for? Did you need more than required because your volume forecast was off? The flu has speed through your area and you had an unanticipated number of sick outs?
Max Delay - Important for phone and chat channels only, this is an indicator of the longest amount of time your customers waiting for an interaction with an agent. A high Max Delay is a big indicator that you have something "hokey" going on with your staffing that requires investigation and resolution.
Addl metrics for sales organizations: Actual Sales Revenue vs. Forecast
Addl metrics for service organizations: Number of Tickets/Work orders etc. that are opened, closed, and the mean time to repair by category (again, a workload driver)
Addl metrics for collections organizations: Number of accounts touched and amount of money collected through immedate payments, number of promise to pays obtained, number of Right Party Contacts
Monthly Metrics
Quality - What is your average quality score for the quality areas that matter most to your organization? What was Planned? What is needed to reduce the variance?
Customer Satisfaction (may also be quarterly, depending on your frequency of surveys)
First Contact Resolution - in a perfect world, you obtain this from non agent reported metrics. However, this metric is often referred to as the "Holy Grail" because it can be difficult to obtain a pure number.
IVR self-service rate: How many interactionss were successfully resolved without an agent interaction?
Agent Shrinkage: How much shrinkage did your center experience? Some shrinkage is positive, some is negative.
Here is the most important thing about metrics - not only should you provide reports on these metrics to your supervisory, management, and executive team, your WFM and QM team HAVE to be able to explain when a variance on a metric is outside threshold and your management team is prepared to take action to improve metrics - or you are simply reporting to report without adding value to your organization or customers.
I'll try to answer on two levels. First, there are benchmark organizations that exist out there (BenchmarkPortal immediately comes to mind) that capture tons of benchmark data on call center performance across a wide variety of industries and applications. These would be a great place to start. This would allow you to set meaningful targets from the start and not wonder if your window into performance is wide enough or you are performing at appropriate levels.
Second, most call centers align around a three-pronged strategy grouping for their KPIs - Customer Satisfaction (Service Level/Answer Speed/Abandon Rate, CSAT / Loyalty survey results, call monitoring results, first call resolution), Employee Satisfaction (associate retention/attrition, results of employee satisfaction surveys), and Efficiency/Financial Performance (occupancy, utilization, call handle times, schedule adherence, cost per call (cost center environment) or profitability (P&L environement).
It depends on the primary focus of your specific Contact Center.
If your primary focus is on Cost Containment – and if you operate your Call Center as a “Cost Center” - then Average Speed of Answer (ASA), Average Handle Time (AHT), and Maximizing Calls per Agent per Hour are typically emphasized as your Key Performance Indicators.
If you operate your Call Center as a “Profit Center” - then typically the Key Performance Indicators are Customer Satisfaction and First Call Resolution (FCR).
It’s all about the quality of the ‘Humanware’ you deploy in your Contact Center to begin with.
A tightly-scripted Call Center environment is typically found where the primary focus is on Cost Containment. In order to maximize Average Speed of Answer (ASA) and minimize Average Handle Time (AHT) Agents are usually required to rigorously follow a script. A tightly-scripted Call Center environment is also sometimes determined by an Industry Sector: such as Financial Services/Insurance/Healthcare - or by a Client’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) for an Outsourcer.
An unscripted Call Center environment is typically found (and should be encouraged) where your Key Performance Indicators are Customer Satisfaction and First Call Resolution (FCR). That’s not to say that an unscripted Call Center environment shouldn’t employ training aids/general ideas/key phrases. Ideally these should form a framework of points upon which an Agent drapes their own personality and phraseology.
Scripted and unscripted call handling are discrete and different pursuits - requiring separate Personality/Job-Fit/Temperament Factors. Someone with the Intellect & ‘Verbal Artistry’ to serve a caller in an unscripted fashion is rarely a good fit for a tightly-scripted Call Center environment. Equally – it is rare for someone who performs well in a tightly-scripted Call Center to successfully make the transition to unscripted caller interactions. Few people possess the ability to work successfully long-term in both a scripted and unscripted Call Center.
Top performing Contact Centers drive their Revenue & Performance through superior hiring tactics. We help employers gain better insight & more accurate predictions as to which applicants from a pool of Candidates would perform up to, or beyond their established standards. You can find out about a Free Trial of SPAS Call Center Agent Pre-Employment Screening Software at http://www.telesoftsystems.ca/64201.html
Hi Dave,
We are a Third party Call Center Quality Assurance Service Provider, Etech has provided services to a variety of Fortune 500 clients across verticals.We assess voice and web chat interactions and provide our clients with key insights to provide agent level feedback such as
Agent Performance,
C SAT,
Sales Performance,
Time to resolution
and much to improve sales effectiveness, customer experience and conduct compliance verifications providing actionable reports that is leveraged to drive improvements at the agent level.
Please feel free to contact me for more information.
Dinesh | Business Development
Etech, Inc
www.etechinc.com
dinesh.dsouza@etechinc.com
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