Call Center Metrics to Monitor and Improve Customer Experience

With $2 trillion of commerce conducted over the phone annually, businesses have a lot riding on their ability to reach and connect with prospects and customers. And yet, consumers are being bombarded with rising fraud and robocalls, causing them to avoid answering their phones even when trustworthy brands like yours are trying to call. This is why it’s so important to monitor and measure key call center metrics to ensure you deliver the best experience for your customers.

In addition to measuring your overall customer experience, these call center KPIs help you track and improve the performance of your teams. If your agents struggle to meet these benchmarks, they may need additional training or resources to boost productivity and deliver a better customer experience.

One of the most critical metrics for any call center is first-call resolution (FCR). These metric measures how many customers resolve their issues during their initial phone or contact with your company. A high FCR shows your team has the prowess to resolve calls quickly, reducing the need for follow-up contacts that consume more of your agents’ time.

Average handle time (AHT) is another crucial metric for evaluating the efficiency of your agents. This metric includes all the time spent on customer calls, including wait times, transferring, escalating, or returning the call, and post-call wrap-up activities such as logging notes and processing data from the call. A high AHT may indicate that your agents need more training or support with resolving customer issues or that you aren’t correctly scheduling their shifts to accommodate peak hours.

Busy signal is the percentage of incoming calls that end up in a busy tone or go unanswered. A busy signal can leave a negative impression on your customers, so you’ll want to keep this number as low as possible. This can be accomplished through training, auto-transfer features, and encouraging customers to use self-service options.

Active waiting calls are the number of customers still waiting for a callback when your agents are unavailable. This metric can help you identify your peak-hour traffic to allocate more agents during those periods. It also helps you determine whether your agents can answer calls within the expected time or if they need to speed up their response times by improving their knowledge of products and services.

The most valuable metrics for a call center are the ones that can help you understand how your day-to-day operations affect your customers’ experiences. Use this information to guide your technology, processes, and people and build a great call center culture. With the right tools, such as an effective CRM, you can measure these metrics and make positive changes to your business.