Measuring the success of an inbound contact center is crucial for ensuring efficiency, customer satisfaction, and overall business growth. Telecom offers domestic contact center services that help companies meet the many challenges of managing an inbound contact center on their own. We help businesses achieve the operational goals assigned to us with measurable results, including 7 key metrics to evaluate performance and measure success:
1. First Call Resolution (FCR)
FCR measures the percentage of customer inquiries or issues resolved during the initial contact without requiring follow-up calls. High FCR rates are one of more important metrics that informs clients and managers exactly how well agents are performing. FCR not only quantifies an agent’s ability to resolve issues or queries on the first call between the customer and the contact center, but indicates efficient problem-solving and a positive customer experience. The correlation between FCR and customer satisfaction rates are the key to providing quality customer service.
2. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Call center customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys are used to gauge customer satisfaction with the service provided by the contact center. CSAT surveys allow customers the opportunity to share their experience and interaction with the company. As a metric, it’s more of an indicator of how well the contact center agent was able to service the customer, rating their experience, typically on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest satisfaction level.
3. Average Handle Time (AHT)
AHT calculates the average time agents spend on each call, including talking to the customer and any related after-call work. A lower AHT average suggests efficient call handling. The quicker customer issues are favorably resolved or questions answered approvingly the better. However, a higher AHT should not be viewed unfavorably as quality of customer calls have priority over quantity. Never compromise quality.
4. Average Handling Rate (AHR)
Similar to AHT, as a metric, AHR measures the average amount of time that customers spend on each phone call with contact center agents. The standard for this metric can vary by industry, but the goal is to reduce average handling rates as much as possible while providing quality customer service. A low AHR average means that agents are managing calls efficiently and may be a sign that fewer agents are required to staff phone lines.
5. Average Talk Time (ATT)
Talk time is another important inbound call center metric as well as a major Key Performance Indicator (KPI). As with AHT, ATT measures the total amount of time an agent spends interacting with a customer on a call. However, ATT averages are calculated to measure an agent’s performance and efficiency. A low ATT average indicates an agent can handle and solve more queries in a shorter period. This helps call centers meet service level goals and also helps to determine the CSAT average.
6. Service Level
Service level measures the percentage of how quickly calls are answered or resolved in a given period, for example, 75% of calls are answered within 20 seconds. Meeting or exceeding service level targets ensures customers aren’t kept waiting too long. Service level percentages can demonstrate whether your business has enough resources dedicated to meeting customer needs. As it indicates how quickly customers are being connected to agents to address needs, low service level percentages are a sure sign that it may be time to adopt new customer service tools or hire more employees.
7. Abandoned Call Rate (ACR)
ACR metric tracks the percentage of callers who abandon their calls or simply hang up before reaching an agent. This metric is achieved by dividing the total number of abandoned calls by the total number of handled calls. High abandonment rates can indicate long wait times, issues with routing, or the need for increased staffing.
Inbound contact centers are an essential component of customer service for businesses. Yet, managing a center in-house can be a complex and challenging task that can easily stray from the core competencies of companies. Running an inbound call center involves high operational costs, including the constant need to meet staffing requirements, training, staff salaries, and investing in technology infrastructure and its continual upgrade, operational space, and ongoing maintenance.
Opting to outsource contact center services to professional third-party providers like Telecom allows businesses to mitigate some or all of these challenges. By outsourcing inbound contact center services staffing and training costs are reduced, infrastructure overhead and expenses are eliminated, staffing needed can be scaled up or down as needed, and, above all, it allows companies to focus on their core competencies other than redirecting valuable time, resources, and energy away from them.
At Telecom, we help businesses stay competitive by providing exceptional customer service while maintaining cost-efficiency that can be challenging to achieve in-house. Our inbound contact center is staffed by highly trained, skilled, and experienced personnel and we are equipped with and offer cutting-edge technology, advanced software, and offer omnichannel solutions to ensure that businesses have access to the latest tools for customer service and support. Our services are results-oriented and are measured by quantifiable metrics. We regularly track and analyze these metrics to help you identify areas for improvement, optimize call center operations, and enhance customer satisfaction. For more information on our inbound contact center solutions for your business, contact us today.