Customer service is a people business. It relies heavily on the strength of communication and the ability of agents to engage customers and resolve issues. This generates a lot of qualitative data that can become hard to quantify and turn into actionable data. Even so, quality monitoring is not impossible. Contact center managers may use call center quality assurance metrics and KPIs to determine the best approach to keeping customers engaged.
What Are Call Center Quality Assurance Metrics?
When you call a customer service line, there is often a call center quality monitoring notice. Most people become so accustomed to hearing this that they give it very little thought. However, call quality monitoring gives managers the information they need to see how well a business performs against specific benchmarks.
Some contact centers focus on call center quality assurance metrics. Others turn their attention to key performance indicators. Still, there are others who use the terms interchangeably. While both are similar, metrics track specific business processes. KPIs track how well a business meets its target goals.
This creates some overlapping as KPIs are a subset of metrics. They are the metrics that draw a straight line between performance and the bottom line. Other metrics may provide more qualitative benefits. Some managers may argue that all KPIs ultimately affect the bottom line, which is why you may see KPIs and metrics used interchangeably.
What Are Some Key Metrics To Look Out For?
Regardless of where you draw the line between KPIs and metrics, there are some key indicators that directly affect your ability to attract and retain customers. Here are some of the most important ones.
1. First-Call Resolution
Of all the KPIs that matter to customers themselves, this may be the most important. There is often nothing as frustrating as getting transferred between departments while each team member passes the responsibility on to someone else. Disconnection is highly likely in these instances, forcing customers to call again. Some simply become frustrated and hang up, especially when on hold for long periods of time.
According to the ICMI Institute, this KPI has the greatest impact on customer satisfaction. To reach world-class levels of meeting your customers’ needs, contact centers have to maintain an 86% average FCR. Some of the benefits of this identified by ICMI include reduced attrition rates, lower overheads and higher rates of job satisfaction among team members.
2. Average Handle Time
Whether they are placed on hold or not, no customer wants to spend hours on the phone trying to resolve an issue. The more important that issue is, the faster the person wants a response. The less important the issue is, the less patience they may have with long resolution times. After all, something initially trivial is now costing them a huge inconvenience.
For these and other reasons, the average handle time is often considered as one of the most important aspects of quality monitoring and assurance. However, it cautions managers not to look at these numbers in isolation. A swift resolution is not always the best one or a real resolution at all. To ensure speed does not compromise quality, managers should also focus on customer ratings. Do higher ratings coincide with a lower AHT? Why or why not?
3. Contact Quality
This is one of those qualitative metrics that are difficult to quantify. For this reason, many contact center managers may not consider it a key performance indicator. It nonetheless plays a crucial role in understanding what aspects of contact between team members and customers lead to higher levels of satisfaction and better customer experience.
Forbes provides the following statistics to prove the importance of customer experience in business:
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- Loyal customers are four times as likely to become referrers and five times more likely to buy again.
- 96% of consumers say that their loyalty to specific brands depends mostly on customer service experiences.
- 84% of companies that focused their efforts on improving customer experience later saw an increase in revenue.
- Providing an exceptional customer experience can reduce the expenses related to serving customers by 33%.
Contact Us:
At Etech, we believe that monitoring call center performance is not enough. Without key indicators to use as benchmarks, it’s almost impossible to tell whether agents are meeting the right objectives. By focusing on interactions with customers, as well as feedback provided on those interactions, contact centers can better improve the way they approach serving your customers.
Want to know more about how Etech employs the use of key metrics to keep your customers engaged and exceed their expectations? Reach out to us via our contact form or send a direct email to info@etechgs.com.