Knowlagent, a call center operations provider, has recently revealed it will be sponsoring the performance section of ContactBabel’s (News - Alert) highly informative U.S. Contact Center Decision-Maker's Guide.

The guide is an annual report that studies the performance, operations, technology and HR aspects of U.S. contact center operations, providing a broad range of important information that will allow these centers to continue to expand.

The findings of the report are based on a random sampling of 210 contact center managers and directors taken from November 2011 until February 2012.

The guide analyzed multiple metrics that help to determine the success of contact centers. It found that talk time has declined, which may be due in part to the introduction of email and text chat. Also, the research found that an agent spends anywhere from to 12.8 percent to 3.9 percent of their time idle.

In a press release, Matt McConnell, president and CEO for Knowlagent, said: "One of the things this report highlights is that contact centers continue to struggle with balancing efficiency and effectiveness in their call center operations. Our customers are finding time for performance improvements by making idle time productive. When idle time is used as an untapped resource, they're able to meet improvement objectives with more time for activities like coaching, training and communications without impacting service levels."

23 percent of this year's respondents stated that they do not measure first call resolution at all, while 38 percent measure the success of the call and whether the required business processes were actually successful, and 39 percent measure only the success of the call.

The importance of customer satisfaction continues to increase as time passes with 59 percent of respondents say that this factor is even more important than two years ago, especially as competing companies continue to fight for prospective customers.