key metrics – As long as I have been working in the contact centre industry, I have been fascinated by the vast amounts of data, information, reports and KPI’s that are produced to help increase efficiency and effectiveness.
My favorite part of visiting a contact centre is to walk up to the “data wall” that pretty much every contact centre facility has. My standard question then is, “can you tell me what this data means?” Most of the time the answer is that most people don’t.
If you really peel down the “information overload union”, there are only 3 key performance indicators that really matter when it comes to managing the contact centre effectively:
Transfers
The transfer rate is a great indicator to learn if your routing strategies are designed in an effective way. The more transfers you see on a certain service line, the higher the chance is that the logic you implemented and the skills-matrix your agents are in is not tuned effectively.
Recommendation: Track the number of transfers on each individual routing strategy and investigate the ones with excessive transfer rates.
Abandon Rate
The percentage of customers that hang up before you get to answer them tells you clearly is you are staffed effectively to deliver on the service level agreement promise you made to the organization and your customers. It can also indicate that your efficiency and automation levels are not up to par.
Recommendation: Closely monitor abandon rate for each service line and learn what related metrics are causing the problem. Volume can be higher than expected, Average Handle time might be higher or perhaps you have fewer agents to your disposal as you planned for due to sickness and late-starters.
NPS Score
Customer (satisfaction) feedback is a great way to learn what customers think of the quality of service you are providing. Especially when this metric is related to the previously mentioned metrics it provides great insight. If you aren’t making your service level, but there is no impact whatsoever on the NPS score, you may think about investing resources in other areas.
Recommendation
Don’t measure customer satisfaction in isolation. Always relate it to other KPI’s and understand what impacts customer satisfaction, and what does not impact it.
Obviously there are other related metrics that are may already report, but looking at these three will provide guidance and direction to cover the basics of running a contact centre operation.
Stefan Captijn Solutions Marketing Director, Genesys
With over 20 years of experience in the IT and Customer Service business, Stefan has an unusual mix of experience having served in IT, Consulting, Marketing and Business Development roles. Stefan has a passion for running, cycling, loudspeaker building and enjoys public speaking and travelling the world.
