Call Center Management Featured Article
Mapping KPIs to Key Business Imperatives
People in the contact center space have a lot of fancy jargon and special processes and tools to measure them. But if you really think about it, the key goals and metrics used in these environments aren’t so very different than those businesses at large typically strive for.
It’s about winning new business and keeping existing customers. It’s about making customers happy, and keeping them onboard even if they have complaints. And it’s about controlling your costs and keeping your workers engaged as you do all that.
That said, how do specific key performance indicators used in call centers and contact centers map to these efforts? Let’s take a look.
So how do you as a business manager, a contact center manager, or an agent help drive the desired business outcomes? Well, as you know, you work to close the deal by encouraging customer conversion. You do your best to meet the needs of your customers so you can get more business from them in the future (customer retention). And you try to upsell them when possible.
Then there’s customer satisfaction. KPIs that map to that include call abandoned rate, call answered rate, average speed to answer and address calls, and first contact resolution.
Employee engagement is a broad term. And organizations that want to encourage it should provide their workers with the appropriate training, pay them a fair wage, and give them financial and other rewards for good performance. Sure signs that employees are not engagement include agent attrition and unapproved agent absenteeism.
Operational efficiency is also key to make sure your business is not spending too much on human resources. Average handling time and agency occupancy (or how long an agent spends on a call) are important metrics to consider here.
Edited by Maurice Nagle