Given the low return rates of surveys , self-selection bias is most certainly a problem , and the results are suspect . But this approach seems the most common avenue for most contact center operations .
Finally , new systems use speech analytics and artificial intelligence ( AI ) to glean from the conversations whether the issues presented by the customers in their contacts were resolved .
The jury is still out on this , but I suspect that if your CCaaS system has this functionality or if you purchase such a system , you might see decent results . But I am not sure . FCR seems to me like a great idea , but only in theory .
FIRST CONTACT RESOLUTION
CHART 1
REPEAT CALLERS AND THEIR HANDLE TIMES WITHIN A 24-HOUR TIME PERIOD
FIXING MOM ’ S PASSWORDS
Forgive me if you ’ ve heard this story from me before , but it is one of my favorites . In my last job , I was working for a very cool and forward-thinking company , Sharpen , a CCaaS provider . I was living near Washington , D . C . but commuting weekly to Indianapolis , where I stayed with my parents during the work week .
One day , I got a panicked call from mom . It seems that every one of her accounts : her Amazon , bank , cable provider , and her online pharmacy accounts had been suspended . Someone had logged into her accounts with her password from the Middle East , and each company had caught the breach and suspended access . Whew .
I told my mom that when I got home that night , I would call each of the companies and take care of changing her passwords and getting her access to the accounts again .
It was easy . One call per company , a few minutes , and no problem .
Except for her cable provider . I contacted them nine times ( seven calls and two long chat sessions ) over a full four hours to resolve the issue .
I wondered : does this company know that their agents do not know how to instruct their customers on how to change a password after it had been compromised ?
FCR SEEMS TO ME LIKE A GREAT IDEA , BUT ONLY IN THEORY .
The next day , when I got to the office , I pulled my Sharpen buddies Adam Settle and Kevin Schatz into our conference room and told them the story . I asked : “ How can we systematically measure each of these agent ’ s performance , the first eight agents who didn ’ t help me , and the last agent who showed me exactly how to change mom ’ s password correctly and surface this issue ?”
We started by plotting this graph ( see CHART 1 ). Sharpen ’ s CCaaS platform has a terrific business intelligence ( BI ) platform built into it , and we could also look at customer data ( with permission ).
In CHART 1 , we plotted handle time per phone number ( X-axis ) against the number of times that the specific number called ( Y-axis ). Each data point represents a single phone number that called the center within a 24-hour period .
We can see at a glance those contacts that were particularly costly to the operation ( those within the gray background ). If this data showed my mom ’ s cable company ’ s performance , it would be easy to spot my calls as problematic by simply looking at this graph .
It makes sense for management to listen to each of these difficult calls and try and determine the issue associated with each one . Could it be a needy customer ? Could it be a training issue ( like the cable company )? Could we , as a company , have created a business process that confuses our customers ? We won ’ t know , unless we listen to these calls .
It was surprising to me how many contacts are repeated calls . Note that for this company , management believes that each contact should be , because of the nature of the function , a one-anddone . Each customer that calls back should be seen as a service failure .
ADVENT OF ACR
After looking at this graph , Kevin , Adam , and I developed a new measure , a variation of FCR , that we called active contact resolution ( ACR ). In it , we calculated for each individual contact whether the customer called back , say within 24 hours after .
By tagging contact resolution to every contact , rather than just the first contact , you can score each agent who handled it as successful or unsuccessful . A thumbs up or thumbs down per contact , and an agent ’ s score is simply their batting average , how often they get it right . Interesting , but does ACR matter ?
CHARTS AND FIGURE PROVIDED BY RIC KOSIBA , REALNUMBERS . FEBRUARY 2025 37