6 Contact Center Metrics To Measure Success

Like everything in business, customer support needs to be measured. This is the only way to understand whether your contact center is running efficiently and where you need to improve. Contact center software providers offer two types of analytics dashboards: one for real-time decisions and another for mid- and long-term strategies. It’s essential to track both, as they include helpful information to understand how to improve performance. Are your agents as efficient as possible? Are clients satisfied with your customer support? Are you solving queries with just one interaction? These are just a few of the things you can learn by carefully following your contact center software KPIs. The most crucial metrics to measure your contact center’s success are:

Response time

One of the most critical indicators to check is how much time your customer support team is taking to respond to a customer query. This can either be the time that the client spends in the call queue or how long it takes for agents to answer a Facebook message. No customer likes to wait, especially when they contact via direct channels such as phone or live chat. This KPI allows you to understand whether or not you have the necessary workforce to answer all your clients’ requests.

Abandonment rate

The main problem of having a long response time is that your customers will abandon customer support lines before even interacting with an agent. Of course, it’s impossible to have an abandonment rate of 0%. Still, this metric allows you to come up with various conclusions. Maybe your call routing and IVR settings are too complex for consumers to grasp, maybe you need to hire more people or retrain your current team, etc.

First contact resolution

As the name suggests, first contact resolution measures the percentage of customers who had their problem fixed with just one interaction – no one likes to contact a company about the same issue over and over again. Excellent customer experience means having problems solved straightaway. This metric tells you just that, and it’s perfect to understand how effective your agents are. Providers like JustCall even allow you to check each agent’s performance to show who needs additional training.

Average handle time

While some customers will take more time than others to solve the same issue, it’s important to check how long it takes to handle (and solve) requests. Average handle time allows you to understand how efficient your guidelines are. For example, customer agents might be taking unnecessary steps each time they interact with a customer that would otherwise save them precious time. To keep this average time low, take advantage of advanced call routing features that you can find in providers like Freshcaller, which allow for customers to solve simple issues without having to interact with an agent.

Customer satisfaction

While the other metrics already mentioned allow you to know how efficient your contact center is, nothing beats knowing how happy your customers are by asking them directly. While this is a more subjective indicator, it offers insights on all the important aspects of the customer experience journey, such as waiting time, time taken to solve an issue, and how friendly the customer support agent was. Contact center software providers like CloudTalk allow you to easily create surveys for your clients to answer after the interaction has ended. Take advantage of this to understand if your customer support is not only productive but also efficient. It doesn’t matter if you’re answering requests at a blazing speed if, in the end, customers aren’t happy with the support received.

Channel mix

Since you’re using a contact center platform, you’re going to receive requests from various channels: phone, social media, web chat, etc. So, it’s essential to know what communication channel your customers prefer. By tracking the channel mix, you can decide how to better manage your customer support team. For example, if most of your agents are only answering calls, but you have more customers interacting via social media, maybe it’s time to make some changes. Simultaneously, you can also check if there’s a channel that you don’t need to have. For instance, if nobody is contacting you through web chat, maybe it’s better to stop offering this option altogether.

Running a successful contact center isn’t easy, but it’s definitely doable. By closely checking these indicators and making changes accordingly, we’re sure you’ll be offering excellent customer support in no time.