Tracking performance is critical to any business endeavor, and call centers are no exception. Call centers must track metrics to maintain high levels of productivity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. This is the best way to get valuable insights into whether the call center’s methodologies are effective.
By monitoring outbound call center performance metrics, managers can identify areas of improvement to ensure their teams perform as optimally as possible. Here are the most important outbound call center metrics to track.
What Are Call Center Metrics?
Call center metrics are performance indicators that help you measure the success of a program, script, or individual agent. Base your call center metrics on the goals and objectives of your business so you can ensure success.
Here are seven important call center performance metrics:
1. Average Handle Time
Average handle time (AHT), sometimes called length, is a call metric that calculates the average amount of time an agent spends on each call. This metric includes:
- Talk time
- Hold time
- After-call work
Monitoring AHT helps your team understand whether their calls are efficient so they can identify areas for improvement.
Ideally, your team will have a low AHT without sacrificing high-quality customer interactions. One way to optimize AHT is to provide your call agents with the necessary training, resources, and support they need to handle their calls efficiently and effectively.
2. Conversion Rate
This is potentially the most important outbound call center metric to track. Conversion rate measures the percentage of successful conversions or sales resulting from calls.
High conversion rates indicate your agents are effectively selling services and products. Higher sales lead to increased revenue for your business.
To improve conversion rates, invest in sales training and effective call scripts, and make sure you’re targeting the right area, demographic, or audience.
3. First Call Close
First call close (FCC) measures the percentage of calls that have successful outcomes during the first call, or initial contact. FCC reflects how efficient your agents and/or your call scripts are at selling products and services.
Tracking FCC is important because it directly impacts revenue, customer satisfaction, and agent productivity.
4. Calls per Agent
Another of the call metrics you should track is calls per agent, which quantifies the average number of calls each agent makes within a specific time frame.
This metric helps measure productivity, workload, and overall operational efficiency.
Monitoring calls per agent enables organizations and managers to identify their staffing needs, optimize agent schedules, and implement targeted training programs to enhance agent performance.
Tracking this metric helps create a balanced ratio that ensures agents are not being overworked or underutilized. Taking action in this area can lead to enhanced job satisfaction and reduced attrition, and it can ultimately have a positive impact on the call center’s revenue.
5. Contacts per Hour
Contacts per hour (CPH) goes hand in hand with calls per agent. This call center contact rate gauges the average number of successful calls an agent completes within a single hour. Such data indicates levels of efficiency, productivity, and efficacy.
Tracking CPH helps managers identify individual agents’ strengths and areas for improvement. Additionally, tracking this metric can streamline workforce scheduling and help managers implement targeted training programs.
6. List Conversion
List conversion measures the percentage of leads or contacts on a list that are being successfully converted into desired outcomes, whether that’s new customers or appointments. This metric provides insights into the efficacy of a team’s lead generation and closing strategies, targeting methods, and individual agent performance.
By tracking the list conversion metric, call center managers can better identify opportunities to optimize the quality of leads, enhance targeted training for agents, and refine calling scripts.
The list conversion rate indicates how efficiently team members use resources, how streamlined their process is, and how successful their sales strategy is.
7. Call Quality
Another of the most important call center quality metrics is call quality. This evaluates the overall quality of the call, including the effectiveness and professionalism of the agent during the interaction.
This key performance indicator (KPI) encompasses various aspects of the interaction, including:
- Clarity of communication
- Problem resolution
- Customer satisfaction
- Adherence to call scripts
Measuring call quality typically involves a handful of different methods, like customer feedback surveys, agent self-assessments, and call monitoring.
By tracking call quality as a key metric, call center managers can ensure high-quality calls across all agents, contributing to a positive brand reputation and increased sales, both of which are essential for a call center’s success.
Tracking Metrics Leads to Success
These are just seven key outbound call center metrics to track. Your individual call center metrics definitions may vary, as you may have different goals or KPIs to measure depending on your business objectives.
Whatever your key metrics are, having a system to track these metrics and gauge their failures and successes is critical to a successful outbound call program.