What is a Call Center Metric and How do you Choose One?

Customer service is the cornerstone on which successful businesses are built. Most businesses rely on call centers for handling different aspects of customer service. But how to measure the efficiency of call centers? This is where metrics come into play, as they help measure the effectiveness of call centers.

Metrics help assess the performance of the call center, ensuring that a consistent level of service is maintained. Call center metrics also help in understanding the customer’s experience.

Supervisors can monitor call center metrics in real-time to solve issues quickly. But this is only possible if the metric is clearly defined and is in line with the organization’s business strategy. If not, the call center metrics can, in fact, lead to poor service quality, disorganization and an overall decrease in business’s goodwill.

Therefore, it is necessary that ample time and consideration is given for selecting the metrics for your call center, as they will help in the accurate assessment a call center’s performance.

To help you better understand what metrics are, the blog will take a look at the characteristics of a metric, followed by a small guide to help you choose the right metric for your call center and finally some examples of popular call center metrics used globally.

1. Characteristics of a Metric

Effective call center metrics should embody the following characteristics:

Quantifiable

This sounds too simple, but the quality of quantifiable has several implications. For one, being quantifiable leaves no room from assumptions when the metric is being communicated to your team or someone else from the organization.

For instance, when you need your agents to improve CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score by 35 % in 3 months, it leaves no room for ambiguity. The statement not only defines the goals needed to be achieved by your team but also the improvement required in the coming months. The statement gives a target to your agents and is much better than just saying “improve customer satisfaction.” So, it is about clearly depicting a target in numbers.

Measurable

The call center metric you select should be measurable with tools at your disposal, or you should be aware of which tools to be used for measuring the said metric. The right tools will ensure that the metrics recorded are not an anomaly and are statistically meaningful.

Metrics Should Be Time-Bound

The metric you decide to record should be reported regularly. Infrequent reporting of metric can lead to incorrect or insufficient data. This will only make the metric inadequate for any action. Also, if the metric is not recorded and reported on time, it can lead to poor decision making by the management.

2. How to Choose the Right Metrics for Your Organization

Call centers are the heart of customer experience and correctly chosen and calculated call center metrics only helps your team to understand what the customer really wants. The right metrics will allow your call center to achieve the set goals consistently, benefitting both your organization and your customers.

Here is how you can select the right metrics for your call center:

Identify the Metrics that Aligns with your Business

Choose the metrics that are in line with your organization’s objectives and strategy. The metrics selected should align with the company’s mission, goals, and values. The metrics that have the most impact on the goals should be prioritized.

Define the Metrics

Identify and define the metric that you want to measure. For the metric to be measured accurately and regularly, they must be clearly defined. This will help the call center metric to contribute to the growth of your call center.

Find Ways to Calculate the Metrics

Choose the data points that will help contribute to the measurement of selected metrics. This will ensure that the metric is assessed correctly and consistently. Also, it is crucial that you use the metric to analyze them accurately with real-time and historical reporting.

Define Each Metric’s Purpose

Each of the metrics you select should be meaningful and should serve a purpose. The metrics could be used for informing managers, or some other purpose that should be clearly defined. Just make sure that the objective is clear to everyone using the metric.

Review the Metrics

Metrics can fluctuate, and therefore, it is essential to assess them in real-time, apart from comprehensive historical reporting. This is essential for running an effective and efficient call center. The selected metrics should also be available to agents in real-time so that they can respond to them accordingly.

3. Some Examples of Call Center Metrics

Have a look at the following list of important call center metrics that depict the performance of call centers very clearly.

Quality Scores

The overall caller experience can be measured by this metric. Quality scores can be checked for individual agents as well as the whole team. Tracking quality score brings a clear picture of the overall performance of the agents.

First Call Resolution

This metric measures the percentage of calls that end on a positive on the very first opportunity out of all the incomings calls. To calculate the first call resolution metric, you just need to divide the number of calls resolved on the first contact by the total number of first contacts.

You can further segment the data by call type or call reason, etc. For instance, you can segment calls for billing issues, marketing, legal, or tech support. Remember the primary objective of First Call Resolution is to improve customer experience and satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction

This metric is all about how happy customers feel after receiving the customer support. It involves the sheer preparedness of the agents that further lead to make the most out of every available resource such as customer information and other tools.

Average Handling Time (AHT)

Average Handling Time is the total amount of time agent takes to handle a call. AHT measures areas like talk time, on-hold time and wrap-up time. Remember that ideal handle time varies from time to time as different issues may take different times of the agents.

Transfer Rates

This metric is a percentage of calls that agents transfer to someone else when they don’t have any plausible answer themselves. The transfer usually occurs to various reasons, including the request of a caller, incorrect routing from IVR or the fault of the agent.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

This metric is used to predict customer loyalty. It shows how many of the customers are happy with the services and would recommend you to their family and friends.

Conclusion

The metrics you adopt for your call center have an impact on the customer experience. Of course, some metrics track operating costs and business needs, instead of being customer-centric and this is the reason that you need to have a balanced view of the metrics. This helps you keep your customer happy while allowing your call center to be an high-performing and efficient business center.