Contact center agents are the first, and often most crucial, line of communication with customers. Providing these staff members with insights and analytics to deliver superior experiences distinguishes good service from outstanding service. But what are the essential metrics to track, and how can businesses stay on top of them, especially when agents are working remotely? Let’s explore a few key metrics and how an advanced contact center solution can help optimize them.
The Need for KPI-Driven Analytics
Outstanding customer experiences lead to extended brand loyalty, higher renewal and upsell activities, and greater brand recognition. Delivering analytics on these indicators through a cloud-based infrastructure provides managers of virtual and hybrid contact centers with a cohesive view of their entire operation. Agents in distributed locations can leverage a unified Contact Center as-a-Service (CCaaS) solution from anywhere with an internet connection. This allows administrators to manage and monitor their entire staff simultaneously, whether agents are in a physical office or working from home.
Nadine Simpson of United World Telecom recommends that companies set specific key performance indicators (KPIs) to analyze contact center solutions. Five key KPIs any contact center should track include:
- First Contact Resolution (FCR) Rates: Effective contact center tools can measure whether a caller’s inquiry was resolved on the first call, whether additional callbacks or emails were required, and the time elapsed during each attempt.
- Average Wait Time: One of the most common customer service complaints is the amount of time spent in queue waiting for a representative. Contact center reporting documents the amount of time callers waited in queue.
- Average Handle Time (AHT): This measures the average time spent handling a call, including both talk and hold time. By carefully monitoring contact center analytics, managers can ensure agents are keeping AHT low, ensuring customers quickly get their questions answered.
- Call Abandonment Rate: This refers to how often customers abandon a call, usually due to excessive wait times. Sophisticated, unified solutions can help agents perform their tasks more efficiently, reducing abandonment.
- Agent Compliance: Cloud-based workforce management tools can monitor whether agents are adhering to their assigned schedules, regardless of their physical location. Compliant, efficient agents significantly impact productivity.
Tracking Contact Center Analytics
Monitoring these key metrics throughout the day is essential for delivering exceptional customer experiences. However, according to consulting firm McKinsey, a majority of organizations do not utilize advanced analytics and performance metrics to improve their outcomes. Why don't more companies leverage advanced contact center analytics? Many are hindered by entrenched legacy technologies that lack sufficient reporting and metrics capabilities.
Yet, contact center analytics tools offer vital insights to help administrators identify agent strengths and weaknesses, pinpoint and predict peak call volume periods, document hold times and call drop rates, and monitor agents’ compliance with established personnel requirements. Accurate performance data can help contact center managers adjust staff schedules, support agents in need, and reallocate resources to optimize customer engagement.
Organizations that don’t employ straightforward cloud-based analytics do so at their peril. “When a company doesn’t have a clear view of the customer journey, contact center performance across major KPIs, such as quality score, average handle time, and contact resolution rates suffer,” confirms analytics executive Niren Sirohi in an article for Customer Strategist. Contact center analytics are a key starting point for improving the customer experience.
Building an Effective Contact Center Solution
At our company, we offer a Contact Center Essentials solution designed to help businesses build a contact center solution that meets their needs and delivers comprehensive analytics to help achieve performance goals. With effective contact center tools, businesses can transform the customer experience, providing superior engagement that creates efficiencies and increases the company’s bottom line.
