It’s no secret that if a customer is dissatisfied with the experience s/he has on the phone with a call center representatives, the call must likely be escalated to a supervisor or manager for the customer to feel like they have been heard and the issue resolved. With a customer-first philosophy in place, it means that you must have a number of supervisors and managers that are ready to handle to complaint calls right away, helping to improve overall call center operations.

The bar on call center operations can be raised to the highest degree only when a center fully drills down on the concept of “measuring what matters most.” It is most important to continue to improve the customer experience, a recent Knowlagent blog post revealed.

In retrospect, companies used to analyze average handle time (AHT) as well as the number of calls handled, but nowadays these factors matter much less as the customer care landscape continues to revolutionize. In today’s world of instant gratification, customers want and need service that is delivered in an extremely short period of time at an exceptional level. According to the blog, “A speedy response is appreciated, but only when it’s personalized, professional and accurate – and when what’s promised is actually carried out.”

Although AHT and various productivity measurements are still relatively important within a contact center environment, in order to see the highest level of success, agents must realize that the customer experience is key. In fact, there are five important elements that stick out above the others.

First is Service Level.  It is imperative that call center operations power a lasting impression the first time.  Being able to get in touch with agents right away is necessary for customers to feel as if their problems or concerns take priority over other issues affecting the call center on a daily basis.

Secondly, First Call Resolution (FCR) can significantly alter customer satisfaction levels which can in turn drive up costs if a customer is left feeling unassisted. For example, if a second call is required for the same issue, research has shown that ratings will be approximately 35-45 percent lower.

In addition, Contact Quality and C-Sat can be grouped together due to the fact that if you view an unbiased notion of the level of quality in any center, what the customer thinks is a huge portion of this.  Through such a comprehensive approach to monitoring, the contact center kills two metric birds with one stone: It gains a much more holistic view of Contact Quality than internal monitoring alone can while simultaneously capturing critical C-Sat data that can be used not only by the QA department but enterprise-wide, as well.

Lastly, Employee Satisfaction (E-Sat) is directly related to how satisfied agents are and the level of help and knowledge they can provide to customers. If call center operations don’t take the steps needed to continue to evolve these practices as new issues arise, agents will be quickly searching for other jobs which can be extremely costly to contact centers which then must engage in finding new agents and training them according to individual call center specifications.