Call Center Management Featured Article
Efficient Collection and Use of Metrics Drives Call Center Success
Any call center worth its salt is measuring key performance indicators such as average handle time, average talk time, abandoned calls and first call resolution. Metrics are at the heart of the call center, and they enable managers to staff appropriately, keep service standards up to par, and fine-tune operations.
Not every call center has good reporting tools in place, however, and this can make a huge difference.
The best call centers don’t just collect metrics, they employ real-time reporting and analytics to enable them to adjust on-the-fly.
“If a manager discovers on Tuesday that Monday’s call volume forecasts were not matched to demand, adjustments can be made for the following Monday, but that doesn’t change what happened the previous day, or the number of calls that may have been lost because customers grew impatient and hung up,” noted a recent Monet Software blog post on the topic. With real-time data, however, “managers can address challenges as they arise, limit the damage and prevent small issues from evolving into major concerns.”
Real-time workforce management systems can automatically collect and display both historical and real-time performance data on the individual, group or call center level, both enabling managers to make instant adjustments and delivering alerts when problems such as long hold times start to occur.
The modern call center also should be able to integrate real-time data with other key performance indicators, enabling a scorecards for agents and supervisors that can assist with the conversion from reactive responses to a more proactive approach.
“While these will be chiefly utilized by agents and managers in the ongoing quest for better customer service, they can also be created for other specific company groups – for example, some call centers set up a cost scorecard for the company’s Chief Financial Officer, that can deliver such metrics as cost per sale, cost per contact, Etc.,” noted the Monet blog post.
Monet outlines the key elements that every workforce management system should include: Real-time performance snapshots and insight into emerging trends, display of vital information on one screen, detection of patterns across multiple dashboard components, identification of inefficiencies in agent skill sets, generation of trending reports to provide evaluation feedback, identification of actionable changes in a company’s scoring process, and comparison of peers, groups or departments to highlight collective gaps and performance gains.
All call centers keep track of metrics. But what separates the best call centers from the rest is how quickly and completely these metrics can be used to drive effective adjustments within the center.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi