Call Center KPIs

It would seem that outbound call center KPIs and inbound call center KPIs are simple: the company has its own call center, the phones never go silent, and the team of operators is busy all the time.

But how do you understand how quickly each caller had their question solved, how many people got tired of talking to the answering machine, hung up, and are already turning to competitors?

In other words, how to measure the effectiveness of a call center?

Let’s imagine a person called to get additional information about the company's services. In most cases, what answers them is a voice recording. The subscriber, guided by the voice menu, tries to reach an operator by pressing the suggested numbers. Finally, the conversation begins, but you have to start the explanation over if the call is transferred to another specialist.

Unfortunately, the problem will not always be solved immediately. It also happens that all the operators are busy, or that people give up after hearing a lot of unnecessary information from the IVR and trying to reach a living person.

These are just the most common problems that can affect the efficiency of a call center.

How do you calculate and analyze all the situations when the client did not receive the expected assistance?

What is the service level of a specific call center?

Quite a few call center key performance indicators are used to monitor the activities of the unit handling customer requests. It is not necessary to calculate all possible coefficients: you need to choose some of the most important criteria in accordance with the objectives of a specific call center.

Call Center KPI List

The key performance indicators of a call center can be divided into a number of groups:

• Call center agent performance metrics;
• KPI call center accessibility for subscribers;
• KPI customer satisfaction;
• KPI quality of service;
• financial KPI and others.

In order for the efficiency of the call center to grow, each operator needs to be interested in personal growth. For this, they need to know the call center KPI metrics by which their work is assessed and their salary is calculated.

The KPIs must be objective and achievable. They may include the number of problems resolved from the first call, the number of failures, the number of connections per hour, the call hold time, customer satisfaction, etc.

More and more companies are coming to understand that the main call center KPI is customer satisfaction. Let’s analyze the contact center KPIs that have to do with it.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

CSAT is a crucial call center KPI that measures the level of satisfaction customers have with the service they receive. It's typically gathered through post-interaction surveys where customers rate their experience on a scale (e.g., 1-5).

High CSAT scores indicate effective service, while low scores highlight areas needing improvement. Regularly monitoring and addressing CSAT can help enhance overall customer experience and loyalty.

Queue time

This is one of the most important call center metrics and KPIs. This coefficient allows you to determine the time that the average customer spends in the queue, waiting for a call center operator to answer.

Average time to abandon

This is a very useful and important indicator to achieve your goals. It shows the average critical time after which a customer abandons the queue and ends the call. Being dissatisfied, they may decide to contact another company.

IVR routing accuracy

This is an important criterion for assessing the effectiveness of interactive voice menu settings. It is this ratio that shows how many people received a detailed response using IVR routing. It is calculated based on the ratio of the number of subscribers who chose IVR and successfully resolved the issue to the total number of subscribers who chose IVR.

First call resolution

This is one of the most important measures that allow you to judge how many subscribers were able to immediately solve their problems. To improve this indicator, it is advised to avoid cold switching of the client to other departments, where with a high probability they will not be given an exact answer, and the call will bounce back or break.

Escalation rate

It is calculated as a percentage of calls transferred by operators to more competent employees within the total number of calls. It gives an understanding of how often operators transfer calls to other departments.

Call abandon rate

This is an indicator of the number of customers who called, but for various reasons were unable to talk to an operator. The statistic programs for call centers allow you to allocate lost calls. This makes it possible to handle such calls separately and reduce them to zero with time.

Utilization

This is one of the most useful call center efficiency metrics to determine how well the number of operators is chosen. A balance is very important here: operators should not be engaged in doing anything, but an excessive workload demotivates personnel.

The effectiveness of the call center standards will be low in either case. This coefficient in a dynamic gives an understanding of how busy the operators are at different times of the day, which will allow for determining the peak hours. It is also a reliable way to calculate the required number of workers.

The optimal workload of operators should be approximately 70-80% of talking in the total working time.

Average handle time

This indicator of productivity can be calculated for one operator as well as for the entire call center. This is the duration of one call, which includes the waiting time, talk time, post-processing time, and pauses.

The study of this criterion may indicate a change in the subject of customer requests, which increases the duration of the conversation. In addition, it will show an artificial increase in the post-processing time of the call and the pauses, which may mean a deterioration of discipline in the unit.

Service level

This is one of the examples for calculating call center performance. This is the speed at which the call is received by the operator - in other words, the call center capacity.

Calculated as the ratio of the percentage of calls to the time it takes to receive a response. The ideal customer service will have a ratio of 100/0, that is, the operator responds to 100% of the callers immediately.

But in reality, this indicator is usually around 80/20 - the operator answered 80% of calls within 20 seconds after the connection.

Conclusion

The cumulative analysis of call center KPI examples aims to identify weaknesses in the call center management strategy. Therefore, a systematic study of these factors will be a guide to action for changes in the call center’s work.

At the same time, in addition to the manager, the operators also need to understand their personal indicators and how they affect the successful work of the entire team. Studying the performance of the call center KPI examples will certainly help you find a way to optimize the workflow and ultimately increase the profitability of the unit.