Adding Up the Right Key Performance Indicators
Learn how the right key performance indicators can help your contact centre improve, prepare for volume spikes, and satisfy your customers.
When it comes to any game, business or activity, it helps to evaluate your performance. Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are metrics that can help you determine how your contact centre is doing in any given arena.
The exact key performance indicators to use depends on the nature of your business. Most contact centres make do with a select handful of metrics, but throwing a wider net to gain a more comprehensive idea of how your contact centre is performing can be a great way to prepare for future volume spikes, to staff your centre appropriately and determine what steps you’ll need to take to improve your level of customer satisfaction.
Here are a few key performance indicators that any contact centre can benefit from:
1. Average Wait Time
How long your customers wait before reaching a live agent has a significant impact on your overall quality of customer service. No one likes to wait on hold, and keeping customers foot-tapping, grumbling and sighing for too long encourages lower rates of customer satisfaction and higher rates of call abandonment.
2. Call Abandonment Rate
Speaking of, call abandonment rate is a KPI that you can’t afford to ignore. On Hold Messaging Association found that 34 percent of callers who hang up never call back. Lose a call, and you risk losing a customer.
3. Average Handle Time
Average Handle Time, or AHT, measures how long it takes your agents to resolve a customer issue. With this metric, it’s important to keep an open mind. For instance, encouraging your agents to keep their AHT rates at an all-time low can reduce levels of customer engagement. Companies who focus on engagement and satisfaction rather than speed of resolution tend to develop better and longer-lasting relationships with customers. On the other hand, your customer is on the phone because they want an issue resolved, and taking too long to do so reflects poorly on your business. By effectively integrating multiple channels into one seamless customer experience, you can keep AHT under control.
4. Service Level
Service level refers to the percentage of calls answered within a given time frame. This metric can be presented in real-time to both agents and contact centre managers, allowing your team to make informed decisions to meet your service level goals. This is also a valuable KPI for predicting and preparing for future volume spikes.
5. After Call Work Time
After call work time is an important metric that not many contact centre managers talk about. While handle time is undeniably reflective of staff efficiency, after call work time is equally important for keeping the contact centre running smoothly. Like AHT, this KPI calls for a balance. Keeping after call work time too short runs the risk of creating errors, while letting it run too long costs your contact centre money.
6. Agent Turnover
As with any business, high turnover rates are detrimental to your success. While turnover rates are generally higher in the 21st century than in previous decades, it’s still important to create a great contact centre culture that encourages agents to stick around. Low turnover rates benefit your staff by contributing to high morale, which in turn benefits your customers.
7. Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is the name of the game in the contact centre, but tracking this metric can be tricky. A popular method of determining rates of customer satisfaction is by using outbound surveys after each interaction. Regardless of how your contact centre chooses to collect data on customer satisfaction, keeping this KPI at a high ensures your customers aren’t running to your competitors to have their needs met.
How Data Visualization Software Can Help
Finally, once you’ve decided on your KPIs, it’s time to decide how best to track them. Data visualization software can help contact centre managers visualize KPIs by converting data into images that can be easily interpreted and understood. By using pie charts, graphics, interactive displays and more, you can track KPIs in a way that makes sense to you, as well as effectively present them to your team. With the help of cloud technology, data visualization software is now easier to use and more affordable than ever before, changing the way that contact centres relate to their metrics.
By tracking the right KPIs, you can remain on top of your contact centre’s performance. KPIs also give you measurable goals to shoot for, and visualizing your metrics in a way that’s easy and engaging helps you share the information with the whole team. To learn more about how KPIs can help improve your contact centre’s batting average, download our free white paper!
