To best understand your employees, your daily productivity levels, what you can improve in your business, and your customer’s thoughts and needs, you need to analyze call agent performance center metrics. If you do not understand what’s going wrong in your business – and what you are succeeding in – then you will not know what to keep and what to change.
The same goes for anything – if you find that one marketing team is working and the majority of your customers are responding well to your Facebook Ads, then keep posting! If you find that none of your ideal clientele is responding to your mass emails, then you may consider switching tactics.
Figuring out what is working with your unique business and what is selling short is key to utilizing resources the most effectively and saving money after all, why would you waste money on a marketing method that does not work? The same goes for your call center agent performance metrics – you need to read into what is working, what agents are performing their duty, who is falling short, and what you need to change within the organization and structure of your call center.
Maybe the agents are struggling with what to say. Maybe you have not provided enough training to all of your agents. Or, maybe your agents are falling short because they don’t know how to handle a crisis in real-time on the phone. Whatever the reason, figuring out what needs to be changed is key to boosting your business standing in the industry and keeping customers happy.
See more how few bits of very important information that you can utilize with call center metrics and KPIs that can help you gain valuable insights into your customers, learn more about your rate, and analyze your performance.
But first – what are the call center agent performance metrics? In short terms, the call center metrics are numbers and data that can measure how well the agents and the call center as a whole is performing. Are calls being dropped and customers unhappy? The call center agent performance metrics can measure how well the call center is achieving and if you are reaching your goals. Typically, you will find that businesses will measure the efficiency of their call center by using data via KPIs, customer service surveys, and number of dropped calls.
Average call drop rate
It also known as the call abandonment rate, is the number of times that customers will hang up the phone without having their problem resolved. If a customer asks questions about what is happening with their current phone plan and the agent is not able to describe what is going on with their bill, why they were overcharged, or why their phone is not working, the customer may get frustrated and hang up. This is a poor metric and can hamper the overall productivity of the call center agent performance metrics.
Calls blocked
The next piece of information that businesses can learn by analyzing their call center agent performance metrics is the percentage of calls blocked. The number, or percentage, of calls blocked shows the business how many calls that came in that were not answered by an agent. This can be due to any reason either by fault of the operator themselves accidentally pressing her wrong button, the software not being able to handle the high number of calls at the specific site, or not having enough available call center agents to field the call when the phone call came in. This metric can help show businesses that they may need more call center agents, they have exceptionally busy times, and they need to upgrade their software.
Time in the waiting line for the phone
The next piece of information that you can learn from analyzing the call center agent performance metrics for your businesses is how much time the caller will spend in line waiting for their call to be picked up by the operator. If you find that the average wait time or on the phone is very high, this means that you may need to find out ways to speed up the process of answering questions while on the call, hire more call center agents, or have an effective voicemail system.
Speed of answering the phone
The next information you can learn with the call center performance metrics is the speed of time in which the call center agents will answer the phone. The higher the number is, the less efficient your call center agent is operating! If you have a call answering time of below 5 minutes, this is typically a good sign – if customers have to wait over 5 minutes for their call to answer, chances are they will hang up.
Handle time
The next piece of information you can learn in the metrics is the average handle time – this is the amount of time that is spent with the agent on the phone. If the customer calls the call center, the agent picks up the phone, they discuss the problem, and the problem is either resolved or it is still in question, and the call center agent hangs up, this is the handling time. Almost always, the operator will not hang up until the problem has been resolved or the customer has disconnected their line.
Work time
After an agent has hung up with the customer and they know how they have to resolve a problem for the person they just spoke to, they will have to get to work to figure out how to resolve a claim or figure out why the customers are upset about their product or service. In this case, the after-call work time is the amount of time the agent spends fixing the issue of the customer having hung up the phone.
Resolution
If the call center agents are able to fix the customer’s problem without having to transfer the caller, put the caller on hold, or ask the caller to call back at a later date, this is the first call resolution rate. The higher this number is, the better your call center is doing!
Service level
Another metric that you can analyze is the service level – this specific information tells the business how effective each agent is working in real-time. If an agent is picking up the phone and helping 5-6 clients per 30 minutes resolve their problems, this agent will have a higher service level than one person who is not able to help anyone in a 30-minute window.
Occupancy
The last metric you can learn via call center agent performance metrics is the occupancy – the occupancy rates typically tell the management staff how much time the agents are on the phone per day or per hour.
Conclusion
As you can see, analyzing your call center agent performance metrics is key to evaluating your business and seeing where you are falling flat!
