September 2002

The Purdue benchmark research has been conducted since 1995. Purdue currently holds data for more than 5,400 call centers. To learn about how to participate in some of Purdue University’s new benchmark research, please visit www.BenchmarkPortal.com.

Q: I am looking for models to calculate the total cost of an agent. I am also looking for current information on cost per call and per minute. Any suggestions?

-- Jay Allen

A: There are several ways to look at the total cost of an agent. The TOTAL cost of an agent is computed by dividing the total cost of operating the contact center by the number of full-time equivalent agents. The costs of operating the contact center should include salaries and benefits for all employees in the center; recruiting, hiring and training costs; facilities costs (rent, utilities, etc.); technology costs (hardware, software and maintenance); outsourcing costs; and corporate overhead. Using this calculation, a cost per agent ranging from $75,000 to $100,000 is not uncommon. Since a great many of these costs are fixed and do not vary as the agent size increases or decreases, managers often look at the VARIABLE cost of an agent defined as their salary plus benefits plus the costs to recruit, hire and train the agent. The variable cost per agent ranges from $35,000 to $60,000. The average cost per inbound call in the Purdue University database is $7.00. Estimates of the average cost per inbound call handling minute range from $.60 to over $1.00.

Call Center Reporting Information
In a recent BenchmarkPortal One-Minute Survey, we investigated the effort and satisfaction involved with creating call center reports. The graph below shows the results of the first three questions of the survey:

“How many FTE hours per week are spent preparing reports for your call center?”

“How many separate sources of data are used for your reports?”

“Once the report is ready, how ‘old’ is the information (in hours)?”

As you can see, creating reports for a call center is basically a full-time responsibility. It’s also interesting to note how many separate sources of data are included in the reports for a call center. Given the critical nature of some of the information that must appear in these call center reports, we decided to investigate how satisfied the respondents were with the resulting reports. We discovered that the respondents’ satisfaction with the reports was directly related to the age of the data represented, as is seen in the graph.

Respondent Satisfaction Versus Age Of Reported Data
Digging a little deeper, we can determine statistically that the data age that would most probably result in a “very satisfied” response would be between 10 and 15 hours old. From our overall satisfaction question, only 14 percent of the respondents were “very satisfied,” which implies there is room for improvement in call center reporting.

The following shows the most popular reporting tools in use by our respondents.

Dr. Jon Anton (also known as “Dr. Jon”) is the Director of Benchmark Research at Purdue University Center for Customer-Driven Quality. Have a question? E-mail him at DrJonAnton@BenchmarkPortal.com.

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