Essential Call Center Performance Metrics to Track for Success
Call centers are crucial to providing necessary customer guidance and assistance regardless of the industry. A well-equipped, efficient call center can be vital to the customer care department. Not only does effective customer care help solve the customers' problems, but it also builds a brand reputation.
Every successful company or organization has an efficient customer support department that lays the foundation of a vibrant customer care service.
To deliver high-quality services and improve brand recognition, it's important to understand the essential performance metrics that showcase the effectiveness of the product or service.
Before digging deeper into the call center performance metrics to track, let's understand some fundamental concepts.
What are Call Center Metrics?
Call center metrics are a combination of multiple data and analytics that provide insights into the performance of a call center. Such reporting helps evaluate the productivity, quality, and effectiveness of a call center.
Managers or team leaders compile performance data to prepare weekly, monthly, or quarterly reports to forward to the higher management. These reports provide assistance in steering the organization in the right direction.
Why are Call Center Metrics Important?
Call center metrics help understand the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of the organization and its employees. No wonder top organizations and companies pay close attention to their customer support departments.
More importantly, the call center metrics provide insights into essential metrics, such as customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, conversion, KPIs, pricing, and competitive edge.
So, it's vital to comprehend call center metrics as they're valuable indicators of customer sentiment, quality of service, and the sense of direction of the organization.
There are several call center performance KPIs to track, but here are some of the most important ones to keep an eye on when building, managing, and improving a call center.
10+ Call Center Performance Metrics to Track
It's believed that call center performance metrics are classified into three main categories, which are agent performance metrics, call center operations metrics and customer experience metrics. However, one can pay attention to most of them without categorizing them.
Let's crack open and discuss them individually:
1. Average handle time of the agent
The average handle time of the agent refers to the average duration the agent spends on the phone or live chat while talking to the customer. Usually, the handling time begins when a call is assigned to an agent and ends when the call is disconnected. The longer support calls often raise eyebrows in the customer care support.
2. Average hold time of the agent
The average hold time showcases the average duration the call center agent or support representative keeps the caller on hold. Usually, a customer care representative holds a phone call when this person doesn't know the answer to a query or wants to double-check something with a superior authority. The higher the hold time, the negative the impact.
3. Average talk time of the agent
The average talk time of the agent means the average time the agent spends talking to the customers or prospects. It doesn't include the time spent on the hold. It's a powerful metric to analyze across the board to improve efficiency, reduce calling costs, and increase conversion. The agents with high average talk time and low conversion rates may need to work on their convincing techniques.
4. Number of calls answered, missed, and abandoned
The call center agents have one common purpose: to serve the customers and help guide the prospects. Therefore, each call center agent has a profile that records the total number of calls answered, missed, and abandoned. The data helps companies analyze the performance of the agents, allowing managers to allocate the tasks depending on the outcome.
5. Active waiting calls
It's a powerful call center operation metric that compares the number of ongoing calls to the number of awaited calls. It's one of those call center metrics that provides valuable performance indications about the efficiency of the call center team.
6. Average waiting time
It's yet another important call center metric that portrays the quality, focus, and efficiency of the call center representatives. It's a call center metric that measures the average time a customer spends waiting in the queue. The longer the queues, the higher the frustration. Nobody likes to wait for customer support or assistance, especially if it's an emergency. Companies try to bring in more customer care staff to reduce the average waiting time.
7. Average call abandonment rate
The average call abandonment rate is a call center metric that reports the percentage of customer calls that get terminated before the caller gets a chance to talk to the customer care representative. Sometimes, the long waited queues result in the call abandonment when the caller gives up after waiting for a few minutes.
8. Average call answer rate
The average call answer rate refers to the ratio of the calls being answered as compared to the total number of calls forwarded or received. A lot of companies clearly state their working days and working hours on the contact page of their website to ensure that the customers know when to reach out to the company. The higher answer rate showcases the customer representatives are efficient, available 24/7, and ready to help the customers.
9. Maximum waiting time
Maximum waiting time is the duration a customer has to wait in line before the system connects the customer to an agent. Sometimes, the load on the helpline during a crisis or customer care staff unavailability around holidays leads to increasing the waiting time. It's safe to say that the waiting time has to be minimal. Otherwise, it will negatively impact the brand reputation and frustrate the customers.
10. Callback messaging rate
The callback messaging rate depicts the percentage of callers who choose to get a callback from the customer care representative rather than waiting in the queue. It's more convenient for most customers to hang up the phone and wait for the support team to reach out to you. It's also an essential metric to keep an eye on when you're offering a callback messaging service.
11. Customer satisfaction rate
Customer satisfaction rate is a metric that asks for feedback on the service provided by the support team members or call agents. Usually, when a customer talks to a call agent or customer care representative, the system asks the customer to rate the service being provided. Some customers provide their feedback, while others decide to walk away from letting the system know.
12. Customer conversion rate
Customer conversion rate refers to the percentage of prospects that convert into paying customers. When a sales representative reaches out to several prospects, the majority of them aren't interested in the offer, but a few of them want to look into the product or service being offered. Therefore, the percentage of prospects that buy the product or service is called the conversion rate.
So, these are some of the commonly tracked performance metrics for call centers.
Best Practices for Improving Call Center Performance Metrics
The call center performance metrics are essential indicators of what's working well and what can be improved at a call center. Let's put some light on the best practices to implement when trying to improve call center performance metrics for success:
l Build, train, and empower your teams
One of the best practices that can improve call center performance metrics is to build an empowered team of professionals. Don't sleep on the opportunities to educate and train your team members. Hire industry experts to train your teams, arrange workshops, and sign up for training for your team members.
l Assign different targets for each team
Understanding the strengths and capitalizing on those strengths is what leadership is all about. Hiring the right person for the job doesn't mean the work is done. Sometimes, overseeing the top performers and helping guide them make all the difference. Assign the tasks to the team members that suit their credentials and personalities - if you don't know your employees' strengths and weaknesses, then it's your fault.
l Establish a data-driven approach
A data-driven approach means the decisions are made on the basis of the numbers rather than rough estimates or guesswork. Most call center performance metrics require a data-driven approach to analyze the performance, conversion, and results. Try to infuse a culture of analyzing and reporting the outcome backed by the data.
l Create a safe, healthy environment
Always try to create a safe, secure, and pleasant environment for the employees to grow, learn, and prosper. Make strict rules against bullying, racism, and discrimination. This way, you'll create a safe and profound workplace environment that allows every team member to excel at their desk.
l Track and analyze performance
One of the essential elements is to keep an eye on the analytics. Always track the employees' performance based on multiple indicators. Analyze the time spent, conversion rate, customers' feedback, and other parameters that showcase the performance of the employees.
So, these are worth looking at best practices for improving call center performance metrics in both the short and long terms.
Let's Conclude
Call center performance KPIs provide insightful signals into performance, efficiency, and quality of the service.
However, it's also vital to set up the call center with a high-quality communication system that makes it easier for the staff to assist the customers.
VoIP phones, IP PBX, and VoIP headsets are a few of the essential call center gear products required to provide smooth, flawless call center services.
Nethawk is a state-of-the-art online store that provides top-notch VoIP products, network gear, IP phones, IP gateways, and other IP accessories.