Key Metrics To Measure Call Center Productivity

With the rise of SaaS and fierce competition in today’s market, customer experience has become a priority for many businesses. Call centers often act as the face of your business, having a massive impact on customer perception. According to PwC, 72% of customers consider customer experience to be one of the key factors in their purchasing decisions, alongside price and product quality. Meanwhile, Forrester highlights that 41% of customer-focused companies saw at least a 10% increase in earnings last year, compared to only 10% of less matured companies. We, at WOW24-7, believe that providing a superior, frictionless customer experience is a key differentiator and massive strategic advantage for companies over their competitors.

So what’s the best way to measure the performance of your call center and how it impacts customer experience? Read on to find out how metrics and KPIs can help you improve overall productivity and customer center efficiency and what’s the best call center software. 

What are call center metrics and why to use metrics to track productivity?

Call center metrics are a way of measuring the performance of activities taking place in your call center environment. Tracking contact center performance metrics over time enables your business to identify where improvements can be made and allow you to operate more efficiently, have more productive agents, and ultimately improve in areas that matter to most to your customers.

Why are call center performance metrics important?

Put yourself in the shoes of your customer: have you ever contacted a business over the phone to resolve an issue? What were your expectations heading into the experience? Chances are your top priority was to get a resolution to your issue, to do so in a timely manner, and to avoid friction along the way. Tracking and improving the performance of your call center gives customers the confidence to keep doing business with you, unlocking more lifetime value from your customers. That’s why to track call center industry benchmarks within your customer service is essential if you want your business to propel. You can use a special call center solution to measure and improve your current agent performance metrics. If you measure agent productivity and ensure that most of your tickets are resolved on the first call, you can significantly boost productivity and efficiency of the customer service. Remember that every customer call is important and should be analyzed. 

What is call center productivity and what call center KPIs do we need to track?

Call center productivity is a measurement of the efficiency of your call center agents – the volume of calls they can resolve over a given period of time – in balance with enabling agents to deliver a superior customer experience. And that balance is key! Optimizing your call center solely on getting the fastest resolution time possible has a negative impact on both the customer experience and the agent experience, often leading to higher agent turnover.

Let’s examine customer experience call center metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) so that you know how to boost call center performance. 

Think of KPIs like a report card that helps measure how well a call center is doing. If you outsource your business processes, call center industry metrics are your most important KPI call center metrics. The key KPI in BPO tracks the success of outsourced business operations. 

Examples of Call Center Metrics That Measure CX

Use these call center metrics to track efficiency of a call center:

Average Handle Time (AHT). This is how long it takes to help one customer, including the call itself and any work after. Like if Sarah from customer service spends 5 minutes on the phone and 2 minutes writing notes, her handle time is 7 minutes.

First Call Resolution (FCR). This means solving the customer’s problem in one call, without them having to call back. For example, if Tom calls about his broken internet and the agent fixes it right away – that’s good! But if Tom has to call again tomorrow about the same issue – that’s not so good. Most inquiries should be resolved during the first call and a huge repeat call rate is closely related to customer dissatisfaction. 

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). This is simply how happy customers are after their call. Usually measured by those surveys asking “How would you rate your experience from 1-5?” If most customers give 4 or 5 stars, that’s great!

Average Speed of Answer (ASA). This is how long customers wait before someone answers their call. If customers usually wait 30 seconds, that’s your ASA. The shorter, the better!

What are some reasons for low productivity in call center agents?

When organizations focus solely on speed and ticket volume, agent productivity suffers. While it’s important to equip agents with the right tools to resolve customer issues in a timely manner – because speed is important to both customers and your business – it’s also important to balance speed with a high quality experience. Overworked agents are less likely to stick around, requiring companies to spend time and money hiring & onboarding new talent. A contact center service level seriously depends on the employee’s satisfaction, the inner call volume, and if agents can cope with it as well. Many call centers allow one 15-minute break for the agents during the whole day, and a call center manager can hardly deal with it. Do you know that an agent is supposed to answer 30 to 60 calls a day? That’s a lot, and the right call center, like WOW24-7, lets its employees take more breaks.

What are the key call center metrics to measure productivity?

There are two main categories of call center metrics: Performance Metrics and Experience Metrics. Performance metrics are internal facing measurements which track data points within the call center as work is taking place. These measurements can be agent specific, or overall measurements of the entire call center. Experience metrics are customer facing measurements that capture the customers’ perception of the service they received, typically through post-survey interactions. It’s important to understand both the internal and external perspective to provide a holistic view of your call center operation!

Performance Metrics Handled by a call center

Call Arrival Rate

Frequency of inbound calls over a period of time. So track the total number of inbound calls for the certain period. This inbound call centers metric an be measured per minute/hour/day/week/month. This metric provides the ability to determine peak or low call times and adjusting staffing to meet volume needs.

Average Handling Time (AHT)

Average length of each call. Typically measured in minutes. Useful for defining a baseline measurement of typical call length for different types of issues and where each agent ranks against the baseline. A lower AHT does not always indicate the best customer experience – while it’s important to have efficient agents, be careful to balance speed with courtesy. Some customers may not like the feeling of being rushed!

Average Speed of Answer (ASA)

Average time taken for the agent to answer a call. Typically measured in seconds. The lower the better.

Discover how we achieved a 3x faster response time in this case study.

First Contact Resolution (FCR)

Percentage of calls where the agent is able to resolve the issue on the first call, without the need to transfer the call, or have subsequent calls to resolve the issue.The higher the better – this metric is one of the most important to the customer! You should also consider industry benchmarks when assessing your FCR results. Best in class call centers exceed 90% FCR, which some industries range between 70-85%.

Abandonment Rate

Percentage of calls in which the customer did not reach an agent and were forced to give up due to lack of available agents. The lower the better. Another very important metric – not being able to reach an agent is one of the worst experiences for customers! Consider identifying trends in what times abandonment rates are higher, and adjusting staging resources accordingly.

Cost Per Call (CPC)

Take the total cost associated with running your call center and divide it by the number of calls handled over a given period of time, and you’ll come up with the cost associated with each individual call. Handle a higher volume of calls to decrease the cost per call.

Agent Utilization Rate

Percentage of time a given agent spends handling calls vs. performing post-call tasks. The higher the better. Useful for identifying high performing agents who can help train newer agents to become more efficient with their time.

Customer Experience Metrics for measuring call center

Call center metrics can also be tracked to analyze customer experience and call center’s performance with regard to the provided level of support. These metrics help analyze customers and their preferences and measures the average level of customer satisfaction. 

Experience metrics are often used as high level core metrics that represent the overall ‘health’ of a transaction, and are captured directly by customers typically in post-transaction surveys. In the case of the call center, an experience metric will give a high level viewpoint on how well you are doing in the eyes of customers overall. These metrics are most helpful when needing to communicate a high level point of view to internal stakeholders on the health of a particular area of your business, and become even more powerful when implemented across multiple touchpoints in the customer journey using a standardized question format. It’s like you gain insights to your call center as a whole institution.

It’s recommended to pick a single experience metric to measure for your call center rather than use multiple – picking the right one for you depends on the type of business you operate and what you feel will resonate well with internal stakeholders. In addition to asking for customers to provide a score / rating, it’s vital to ask them to provide a reason for their score via open-text feedback. Understanding the reasons that are driving low scores can help identify improvement areas, while reasons behind high scores can be leveraged to identify top performers and improve training / onboarding materials.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

A post-transaction rating provided by customers via survey or web intercept, typically on a 5-point scale. The exact phrasing and scale of the question can differ, but here’s an example:

‘How satisfied were you with your support experience? Please select from the following options:

Very Satisfied Somewhat Satisfied  Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied Somewhat Dissatisfied Very Dissatisfied

You can calculate the percentage of satisfied customers by dividing the number of customers who are Very Satisfied or Somewhat Satisfied by the total number of scores provided. Benchmarks for CSAT range from in the low 60’s to upwards of 90, depending on industry, with scores within the range of 75-85 generally being considered good.

Contact Center Metrics: Customer Effort Score (CES)

A post-transaction rating provided by customers via survey or web intercept, typically on a 5-point scale. Just like with CSAT, the exact phrasing and scale of the question can differ, but here’s an example:

‘How easy or difficult was it to resolve your issue? Please select from the following options:

Very Easy Somewhat Easy Neither Easy nor Difficult Somewhat Difficult Very Difficult

You can leverage the same calculation as with CSAT to identify the percentage of customers who are having easy experiences: add the number of customers who selected Very Easy or Somewhat easy and divide it by the total number of scores provided. 

Learn how we raised CSAT to an impressive 95% in this case study.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

An industry standard used to measure the customer loyalty by asking the question:

‘On a scale of 0  to 10, How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?’

Based on where customers score within the 0-10 range, they’re assigned a classification of NPS Detractor (0-6), NPS Passive (7-8), or NPS Promoter (9-10). That number can then be aggregated across cohorts of customers by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters, producing a number ranging from negative 100 to positive 100. 

The idea is to have as many Promoters as possible, understand what reasons are driving their high loyalty, and replicate that success with other customers. And for your Detractors, you’ll want to understand what’s driving their low scores via open text commentary and drive improvements in those areas. While NPS can be used at the transactional level, it is better used as a relationship metric to measure the overall loyalty between a customer and your business across all aspects, not just in the context of a single transaction or function.

Benchmarks vary greatly for NPS, with companies across both the B2B and B2C space averaging an NPS score of 17. Industry averages range anywhere from 1 to 28, with industries such as retail, fast food and grocers scoring on the high end, while consumer payments, telecom and utilities companies scoring on the low end.

Suggestions for improving call center metrics and KPIs

Once you’ve started measuring the metrics that matter most to you, consider the following tactics for improvement:

• Some metrics require time to trend the data and get a true representation of performance – be patient! A good general recommendation is to capture 3 months of data before defining improvement plans
• When analyzing agent metrics to understand how improvements can be made, consider what factors may be driving them down outside of the agents themselves. These factors include the tools and training available to the agents, or up-stream processes that may extend call times or otherwise negatively impact the customer experience before the customer even connects with an agent
• Leveraging high performing agents as mentors can be an extremely helpful way to drive improvement
• Expertise in call center management outside of your company is an extremely valuable resource! It’s important to get an outside perspective

Metrics for Call Centers: Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) differ from metrics in assessing call center performance?

A: Metrics and Key Performance Indicators are both measurements, but are done at different levels and with a different context. Metrics measure how well a person or process is performing and are used to identify focus areas for training & process improvement. Key Performance Indicators measure progress toward a defined business goal and are used to drive business decisions and identify focus areas.

Q: What are the best practices for tracking call center productivity metrics?

A: It is vital to take the necessary time to build internal alignment before diving head first into measurement. Each industry is unique, and the challenges faced are diverse. Executive buy-in and cross-functional alignment on which metrics matter most to your business and how much budget will be allocated for tools and training is critical to the success of your call center.

Q: How can call center productivity metrics be used to improve agent performance?

A: Measuring call center metrics is foundational to understanding which tools, resources and training your agents require to better serve their customers and improve performance. At the individual agent level, metric measurement can identify growth opportunities for the agent which can be addressed via shadowing senior agents or by providing training. At the aggregate level, metrics can help identify process gaps that when addressed, raise the productivity of all agents. You can’t improve what you don’t measure! 

But measuring alone isn’t the answer – it’s crucial to understand the context behind the data and what is truly driving your metric results. What’s driving a low Customer Satisfaction score? Is it lack of available training for agents? Low quality software causing dropped calls? Process gaps resulting in poor agent coverage during peak call times? 

Q: How Can WOW24-7 Improve Your Call Center Productivity?

A: WOW24-7’s promise is that we will create a strategic advantage for our clients through a great customer experience that is hard to replicate for our client’s competitors. Our clients say that our outsourced teams feel exactly like in-house teams. We are not just a vendor, we are true partners who care about the success of our clients and value building close relationships. WOW24-7 uses enterprise-grade, top-notch, best-in-class performance management, WFM, big data analytics software, and highly effective tried and tested processes and frameworks that enable the highest call center productivity. 

Steve Davenport

Customer Experience Leader @ Davenport Consulting