Call Recording Featured Article

For fully 39 percent of contact center leaders out there, the question “How are we doing?” is often met with a blank stare and a hearty shrug. This may sound ludicrous to some, but really, for that many out there the issues of not just determining how well the contact is doing, but even how to measure those points, is a lot tougher than some think. Thanks to the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) and Five9, the issue may be a little easier to tackle.

Recently, the ICMI and Five9 (News - Alert) got together to release results from a survey titled “Understanding Modern Contact Center Metrics,” a survey which made it clear that certain new metrics and measurement styles were all but required to get the contact center running as well as it could be. Results from this study will be offered up, reports note, at the ICMI Contact Center Demo & Conference October 19-21, but until then, there's a lot of information here to put to use.

For instance, some key performance indicators (KPIs) are more universally-measured than others. Accessibility is routinely measured, as 83 percent of contact centers use the measure of how readily a customer can get in contact with the contact center as a primary measure of performance. It's not the only one by any stretch, but the numbers start to waver here. For 65 percent of contact centers, efficiency is a key measurement, and for a little over half, 60 percent, increasing efficiency in the contact center is a primary measure. Just to top it off, for just 37 percent of contact center leaders—the largest such percentage in the listing—the greatest measure of agent productivity is customer satisfaction. 

A Dilbert strip from back in 2001 featured one such example of the problems of measurement; a contact center employee named Carl found his job at risk due to his excessively long average call time. So when Dilbert placed a call to Carl about the interface of a product, Carl quickly thanked Dilbert for the call and then hung up. Carl's average call time fell through the floor, and the once threatened employee received a bonus for his effort.

This is exactly the kind of danger that the contact center faces even 14 years later; when the wrong performance metrics are used, the wrong behaviors are rewarded and thus improper results are had. Dilbert clearly wasn't satisfied with the results of that call; he couldn't be, as Carl simply hung up too fast. But for Carl's bosses, Carl's performance was much improved, because Carl's bosses weren't using the right performance metrics. So for the contact center to deliver the best results for the company, it needs to be measured on the right kinds of results. Efficiency is important, yes; spending too much time on a call can be frustrating for the customer as well. But when efficiency comes ahead of customer satisfaction, you get a rep like Carl, giving maximum efficiency and minimum satisfaction.

Measuring call center performance isn't easy, but when the right metrics are used, the picture can be much improved. It's all a matter of determining what's most important, and providing reward accordingly.