FIRST CONTACT RESOLUTION
ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED BY ADOBE STOCK
MOTHER
, FCR , AND ACR
WHY FCR SHOULD BE SUPPLEMENTED BY ACTIVE CONTACT RESOLUTION . BY RIC KOSIBA , PH . D ., REALNUMBERS
I
read with great interest Contact Center Pipeline articles written by my friend , Rick McGlinchey , called “ Solving the CX Calculation Discrepancy –
Parts 1 , 2 , and 3 .”
In Part 3 , he discusses the famous metric first call / contact resolution ( FCR ) and how it is usually not captured by ACD or contact center-as-a-service ( CCaaS ) systems . FCR tries to measure a simple - and customer experience ( CX ) - critical thing : how often do our customers have to call more than once to take care of an issue ?
For this reason , FCR has been one of the mainstay big-picture contact center metrics for years , it seems every company measures it , and operational executives are keen to report it .
But I ’ ve always had my issues with this metric , and here ’ s why .
36 CONTACT CENTER PIPELINE
FCR is an organizational metric . By measuring how often the customer takes more than one attempt to solve a problem , FCR measures the performance of the overall agent group , rather than the individual agent . An individual agent does not control whether the call coming to him is the first , second , or the third contact . Group measures are fine , but … FCR is not really actionable . How do you improve FCR directly ? Given that agents aren ’ t individually responsible for FCR , direct action to improve it is much more difficult . If FCR is lower than you wanted , what can you really do about it ? Hire a consultant ? Training ? Chastise supervisors ?
FCR is not really calculatable . Mc- Glinchey lays out the four common ways FCR is calculated .
First , agent authored disposition codes or “ Wrap Up Codes ” can be used to determine if the agent feels the contact was resolved . This seems a bit sketchy : agents shouldn ’ t determine FCR performance by subjectively measuring it themselves .
Second , you can use data to determine if there are repeat callers / contacts . I like this , but most companies don ’ t use this method as it requires a somewhat sophisticated data query to quantify it .
Third , many companies incorporate within CSAT surveys a question asking : “ Did your problem get resolved ?”