Small and mid-sized globally distributed businesses acknowledge the importance of empathetic KPI metrics. Call center KPI for business helps them to tackle the boldest initiatives and do it from any place.
Controlling metrics ensures readiness for tomorrow’s business challenges and gives the highest level of professionalism, integrity, and communication.
Let’s find out the pros and cons of KPI metrics and how to foster agent’s team dynamics.
First Call Resolution (FCR) rates
In the on-demand market, the faster agents resolve issues of customers, the better. Solving customer’s needs starts when the customer is routed to the right agent or department.
Routing particular customers through ACD and IVR systems creates a base for fast and agile resolution. When customers interact with the relevant person in a company it drastically increases the chance of resolution within one call.
Percentage of repeated calls
If customers don’t solve their issue from the first call, they’re calling till they find a solution. In this case, agents must help within a second call to prevent a new lap of calling. If not, it starts to increase pressure on agents and lower customer satisfaction.
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) metrics
Depending on how customers are treated at first, ongoing calls, satisfaction rises or falls. High CSAT indicates that the company delivers proactive and extensive customer experience across all channels of communication. Customer satisfaction metric influences customer retention.
On-demand customer retention
All successful businesses have customers that have strong business relationships with a company over a long period. Companies strive to increase the retention of existing and new customers by providing timely assistance and business propositions. From the business perspective retaining customers is much more profitable than acquiring a new one.
Occupancy metrics
The more customers your call center reaches, the better for lasting revenue growth. Depending on resources and budget call centers strive to reach an occupancy rate of 80-90%.
If call centers are aimed at a 100% rate, it will be much more difficult for staff to stay energized and effective for a long period of time. Overwhelming agents inevitably burn out, start to make mistakes, and mislead customers due to high contracting volume.
Service across all channels
Modern call centers have different sources of communications such as phone, chat, email, social media. If most of the customers will call the call center, a certain percentage of them still want to communicate via chat, email, social media, etc.
Taking into account just phones deliberately, KPIs don’t show a big picture on service across other channels. Defining the real value of service should be taking into account all channels of communication.
Support teams aim at astonishing customer experience, while the sales force wants to close more sales. For a sales force, there are top metrics they use to understand performance in closing deals.
Conversion rates
Analyzing a certain period like day, week, month, and year metric shows how much customers actually ordered a product or service. It’s possible to adjust metrics for each agent and track results for insights into which agents are more productive.
Sales growth
Every SMBs must grow their sales and there is a way to track it through KPI. For example, if you are marked to make 100 sales per week, the next mark should be making 110 sales. The growth, in this case, will be 10%, and this is an achievable goal by making adjustments to the call center.
Wrap-up time
This is a type of routine that each agent has to face. Making a notice after each conversation with customers gives vital data about follow-up sales in the future. Depending on the proficiency of agents, this time can be pressed or increased as long as agents meet goals.
Calling volumes
The calls agents make during a day, week, or month, the more potential customers they attract the more sales will be closed. This rate should be increased from time to time. By frequent calls, agents instill a preference for the product in a customer’s mind. Even if some customers are not interested in products or services advertised by agents, they could be potential customers in the future.
Abandon call rate (ACR)
It is important to track this metric because a high abandon call rate could be the case of lawsuits from regulatory agencies. Especially in Europe, the United States, Singapore, and Australia.
Other countries strive to enhance their regulations on ACR. However, there are technical or human factors that sometimes put some percentage of abandon call rate. Managers of call centers need to define the roots of high abandonment rates and prevent them in future activities.
Improving KPI metrics
To proactively change KPI metrics in your call center follow these rules:
- Determine the logic of routing in your call center. One of the biggest mistakes of call centers is that they wrongly define the roots of abandoned call rates. Frankly, if customers route to the wrong agent or department, they lose patience and hang up before agents could talk. This mistake is easy to solve by adjusting the automatic call distribution (ACD) or interactive voice response (IVR) software.
- Request feedback from customers. The best way to solve customer’s issues is to interview them. Ask questions about your company, level of services, and what they want to see from the company in the future.
- Look for changes in the global market. Successful companies are constantly screening for new advantages and competitors. The more relevant data and compelling facts you collect about the market and customers, the better chances to achieve an edge on the market.
Bold decision in a tough time
Global competition is a place where companies use every advantage they can use. If there is technology or cutting-edge software that is on-demand for business, successful companies will use it without any second thought.
During economic disruptions, customers become even more demanding, and they need everything you have to deliver as fast as possible. And there are no excuses for them. Customers are more likely to change companies than wait for service.
Competition for small and mid-sized businesses is on the rise. There are no more powerful and cost-effective solutions for call centers than software. Mainly because all infrastructure for initiating inbound and outbound calling is already embedded in the software. All you need to do is to buy a subscription for agents, and you’re in.
