Business Development Metrics

Most centers focus on a handful of choices, depending on their need.  As an example, an inbound center often looks at : number of calls taken per agent, average length of on call and after call work, abandon rate, abandon time, service level measurements, average speed of answer, number of times and length of time that a person was placed on hold, and maybe number of dials out.

Can you imagine a manager looking at a center with 100+ agents and trying to figure out how to improve?  It is no wonder that many centers just coast along where they are and simply try to flounder and keep from drowning. The truth of the matter is that KPI is extremely important.  Without focusing on KPI (and this, really, goes for any industry), one has nothing to measure themselves against and are simply arbitrarily choosing this or that to fix a problem. A sales group has quotas or dollar figures, manufacturing has defects, professional athletes have stats, call centers have theirs.  It is, however, again a question of picking the RIGHT KPI to look at. A professional NFL linebacker, for example, isn’t going to try to have a higher YAC (yards after catch) than the wide receiver.  Instead, they focus on number of tackles and number of sacks per game. In a call center, I believe there are six KPI that are what you need to focus on.

These six will give you a strong indicator of the overall health of your center.

• Average Speed of Answer
• Abandon Rate
• Service Level
• Overall Customer Satisfaction
• Professionalism
• How well was the issue resolved

Together, they paint an extremely detailed picture of whether the customer’s questions are being answered correctly, whether they are being handled in a timely fashion, and whether the center is staffed appropriately.If you have to pick one, pick “Customer Satisfaction”.  All of the others, if boiled down to the core, drive this one single KPI.  In addition to this, if your Customer Satisfaction is high, then you drive loyalty, return business and have made a positive impact on your organization’s success.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.