What’ s the difference between call center and contact center metrics?
Before jumping into it, let’ s make an important distinction:
• Call centers are communication hubs that focus specifically on telephony. As such, most of the KPIs they track involve total calls, average call length, and other phone-based metrics.
• Contact centers are larger, more comprehensive, and increasingly omnichannel. In addition to telephony, they handle channels like social media, email, SMS, live chat, and more.
Despite their differences, the KPIs generally overlap. Most standard call center metrics are not only applicable but also beneficial to contact center operations.
11 ESSENTIAL CONTACT CENTER METRICS AND KPIs
You can break most metrics down into these categories:
• CX. CX KPIs help you measure customer interaction quality, which can impact how consumers feel about your brand, and in turn, customer loyalty. Low scores reflect poor satisfaction, whereas high scores represent happy, satisfied customers.
• Agent performance. This type of contact center KPI measures agent productivity and how well agents are handling each customer interaction. Why? Because agent performance directly impacts CX. These analytics, in turn, support quality assurance( QA).
• Operational performance. Contact center performance metrics track the overall success of your operation within a given period. Improving performance metrics may reduce costs, increase profits, and enable you to deliver a better CX.
For each of these buckets, there are numerous KPIs you might track. Let’ s narrow down your choices and explore 11 of the most valuable.
1. CALL ARRIVAL RATE
Call arrival rate refers to the total number of calls, or call volume, your contact center receives in a certain period. For example, a manager might measure call volume per minute, hour, day, week, or month, depending on their specific needs.
Analyzing call arrival patterns helps you anticipate peak periods of activity and adjust staffing levels accordingly. This makes it easier to maintain service level agreements( SLAs) and meet performance targets; plus you can optimize workloads, avoid overwhelming employees, and reduce agent turnover.
2. BLOCKED CALL PERCENTAGE
When agents are busy and unavailable to take incoming calls, customers are typically met with busy tones. These count as blocked calls because the customers couldn’ t get through immediately. A high percentage of blocked calls may indicate a staffing or organizational issue.
Additionally, blocked calls lead to a frustrating CX. Consumers expect fast, if not immediate, responses from brands, and speed positively impacts customer loyalty. Ensuring low blocked call percentages can help maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty.
ENSURING LOW BLOCKED CALL PERCENTAGES CAN HELP MAINTAIN CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND LOYALTY.
3. AVERAGE CALL ABANDONMENT RATE
Your abandonment rate measures how many customers hang up before contacting contact center agents. An abandoned call can happen for many reasons, which makes this tricky to analyze, but it’ s an essential metric nonetheless.
A rising abandonment rate signals dissatisfaction, which may be due to a high inbound call volume and too few agents around to answer. Tracking this metric over time will help identify potential causes and quantify the impact of any changes.
4. FIRST RESPONSE TIME( FRT)
FRT measures how long it takes before a customer is connected to an available agent. A slow average FRT could indicate that there are too many cases for agents to handle, that agents aren’ t acting quickly enough, or your technology capabilities are lacking.
5. FIRST CONTACT RESOLUTION( FCR)
FCR measures the percentage of customer inquiries or issues resolved on the first attempt without the need for follow-up interactions. A high FCR indicates efficient problem-solving and customer satisfaction, whereas low scores suggest the opposite.
20 CONTACT CENTER PIPELINE