Call Center Performance Metrics Target Different Audiences
March 26, 2015
By Casey Houser
Contributing Writer
A recent industry blog post breaks down call center metrics into two basic types. Efficiency-based metrics inform overall business operations, it says, while customer satisfaction-based metrics inform customer retention.
That analysis from Business2Community, in “Rethinking Call Center Reporting,” concludes that the differentiation of those two types of metrics can be important for reporting purposes as they relate to company stakeholders, improved performance in the workplace, and the promotion of a business as reflected through improved performance. Where it begins to rethink reporting is when it dives into how companies can/should consider how those two types of metrics affect the aforementioned recipients of reports and business performance.
Company stakeholders tend to be interested in many aspects of company operations. They want to see it thrive by making customers happy, but their primary push is for revenue. If a company has happy customers but no cash flow, it will be unable to continue operations. Therefore, reports for stakeholders may want to concentrate more on efficiency-based metrics such as agent performance relative to various workloads. When agents perform at their best with a certain number of calls each day, for instance, it can be good to show stakeholders that a larger volume of calls (X) will necessitate more agents (Y). From there, all parties can easily see projected growth and the resources necessary to make it happen.
On the other hand, customers are not typically interested in whether or not a company makes a lot of revenue as long as it makes them happy and continues to provide them with quality products. Businesses2Community suggests that the call abandonment rate is a good metric for analyzing customer happiness because it directly reflects the number of callers who never reached an agent and may have dropped a call in frustration. Similarly, a net promoter score developed through an end-of-call survey can easily show how customer happiness of those people who have made it through a service call.
It is clear that those two sides of the coin have common bonds but that they will not always mix well. Different audiences will care about metrics and the results of those metrics in varying ways. For businesses, this means categorizing metrics for the benefit of different parts of everyday operations. Overall growth of the company may hinge on both stakeholder and customer satisfaction, so neither side should be ignored. However, for managers in charge of reaching out to both parties, a focus on what matters most is likely what will allow their companies to grow the fastest and with best results.
Edited by Dominick Sorrentino