Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
How WFM Addresses Contact Center ASA
About one minute.
That’s how long it takes for the average caller to hang up if he or she doesn’t reach a call center agent. That’s why average speed of answer, or ASA, is such an important contact center key performance indicator.
ASA is a well-understood, and appreciated, metric in call center environments. Most call centers use the 80-20 rule to ensure an appropriate average speed of answer. For example, they have that expectation – and provide adequate resources – to ensure that 80 percent of calls are answers within that window.
Of course, that’s just for incoming calls. But today we live in a multichannel (and, hopefully, omnichannel) world. That means customers interact with businesses in a variety of ways – including email, social media, and text.
So what do customers expect in terms of responsiveness to these communications? And what ASAs can organizations support and should businesses establish related to incoming emails, social media communications, and customer texts?
That’s something your business should consider if it hasn’t already.
Answers and guidelines on this kind of thing will vary based on company goals and available resources, but I would suggest that organizations need to respond to emails within 24 hours. But texts have more immediacy, so it’s ideal if you can respond to them as quickly as possible.
It’s also not a bad idea to get to social media mentions and inquiries quickly. We all know what can happen when customers complain on social media, and businesses respond inappropriately or don’t respond at all. Things can go viral, and that can sully a brand in a big way.
Whatever ASAs your business feels are right for its various channels, be sure to inform managers and agents of these expectations. And provide the tools that allow them to meet these KPI requirements.
Workforce management solutions can help with that, by ensuring adequate personnel are available to respond to calls, emails, texts, and social media interactions in the way that you and your customers require and expect. WFM can also help you track whether agents are hitting these marks, and if not, why not, and what factors may be barriers to that.
Edited by Maurice Nagle