Let’s consider 9 mistakes that should not be made in the accountability of a contact center.
1. Don’t let statistics of lost calls on the inbound line mislead you
When calculating the statistics of lost calls on the inbound line, one must ensure that the call duration threshold is sufficient to exclude “acceptable lost calls” – wrongly made calls and misdialed numbers. The threshold duration of an incoming call should be five seconds. If the parameter of your call center is higher than this value, the indicator of lost calls might be too low.
On the contrary, if you measure the share of lost calls through IVR, they may be too high. If you are not tracking IVR records correctly and a customer hangs up because they used the self-service process to resolve their request, this should be considered a success, not a lost call.
Note: It will be easier to read if you define the terms of the article and then control their use. Google itself does not do this, resulting in a multiplication of entities.
2. Stop obsessing over the Average Handling Time (AHT)
Measuring the average call handling time can be important for your contact center reporting – it helps to define the number of agents needed per shift. But your employees shouldn’t be too focused on timely call completion and meeting personal KPIs, as they might not be able to resolve the customer’s issues within the given time. As a result, customers will be forced to call back, which is not what we aim for.
Instead, prioritize the First Call Resolution indicator. It enables your agents to focus on resolving the issues on the first call and, most likely, makes your customers happier.
3. Loosen control over the unattainable agent occupancy level
If your agents are daily striving to achieve KPIs and handling a constant stream of calls, they are perhaps prone to burnout, which could lead to subsequent layoffs.
Instead, it’s better not only to monitor the occupancy level but also to provide agents with enough time to gather their thoughts. Work breaks and allocation of time for training can help avoid burnout and bring diversity into the routine work.
4. Don’t ignore customers from the website
📑 📑📑Currently, 60% of customers start their acquaintance with your company on the Internet, so it’s essential to take into account leads from your site or landing page. To achieve this, it’s desirable to unify data about the visit to your resources and calls. This service is called call-tracking.📑📑The aim of this action is to obtain more detailed information about the customer experience, which can be used to measure the number of calls due to the client dropping from on-line communication. This information should then be shared with the Internet resource development team for its improvement.📑📑 📑
5. Don’t Ignore the Data You Already Have
📑 📑📑Your contact center already has a large volume of data. They include:📑
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- How often the client called;
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- How many transfers have been made;
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- How many calls were on hold for too long;
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- and so on.
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📑Although each of these parameters is valuable individually, a comprehensive analysis will identify the main causes and answer the question why some indicators are too high/low. The contact center’s reports should focus on these issues and facilitate their resolution.📑📑 📑
6. Use Speech Analysis
The problem with unstructured report data is that it can be quite challenging to deal with. That’s why contact centers really can’t afford to ignore solutions such as speech analytics. It allows the manager to delve deeper into performance metrics and encounter problems with customer interaction that aren’t always immediately apparent.
Think speech analytics is just for the largest contact centers, right? Wrong! Speech analytics is currently delivering results and promising data to call centers with less than 100 seats.
7. Overcomplicated feedback can turn into your main enemy
Having a large amount of data can easily become overwhelming, so it’s critically important to focus on what matters, and data presentation and visualization are key for this.
Consider what data you’re drawing your agents’ attention to. Do your agents really need to know how many calls are in the queue? Their job is to provide high-quality service, not to quickly process calls for the sake of reducing the queue.
In addition, don’t fall into the trap of measuring average values. Keep a close eye on all deviations from statistical parameters – by putting the spotlight on them, you’ll be able to understand where you’re falling short of meeting customers’ needs.
8. Don’t communicate about too many KPIs
Many contact centers are seeking opportunities to upgrade or replace their management information systems, which manage agents using KPIs. This indicates that such an approach does not provide the management with the information they need to make decisions.
Including too many key performance indicators in reports inevitably slows down the report cycle. For example, if you measure 18 KPIs but use only 5 as evidence to make necessary changes in the call center, you should discard the remaining 13. Otherwise, you are simply wasting time. Measure and analyze only the data that can influence your decision.
9. Focus on more than just the average KPI
The problem with some KPIs, such as Customer Effort (CES), is that they reflect an average indicator, while people answering such surveys often give an extreme response.
CES surveys typically ask the question “on a scale of “very easy” to “very difficult”, how easy was it to interact with [company name]”. The idea is that consumers are more loyal to a product or service that is easier to use.
Therefore, it is important to understand that the KPI curve will have a high variance. Not only the average value, but also the extreme indicators should be taken into account.
10. Additionally
We also have a universal report constructor DATAMIXER, you can read about it here, and you can watch it here.
About reports in OKI-TOKI read here.
How are you tracking the reporting of your call center? Noticed any of these mistakes at your end?
