The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices & Networking

"Companies should move to an end-to-end process level metric on customer satisfaction such as First Attempt Resolution (FAR) - that covers all touch points including contact centers.

The role of contact centers should be viewed in a holistic manner - Greater emphasis should be laid on team level or process level metrics rather than agent level metrics. A good person in a bad process will inevitably end up as a poor performer."

"Evenly weighted measurements of internal quality review, agent solve rate (FCR) and external customer survey scores."

"There are lots of KIP's like SL- service level, speed of answer, queue time, etc."

"First call resolution, and post resolution feedback. Understanding the issue leads to greater success in solving the issue. This saves time as well as money. If there is feedback collected after every incident it only adds to the database and helps build data banks for future application and improvement"

"At the end of every service-call there should be an opportunity to speak with the operator's immediate superior for an informal evaluation - this should not be measured in quantitative values, but instead should be qualitative - listen to the words used, not the stars given."

"That’s tough to answer in general. What goals does the service support? If it’s an outbound sales center, I’ll bet you’re measuring your sales. But are you measuring your sales from repeat customers? Do you use your contact center to solve problems or just triage and escalate them? How many problems are solved at level 1 on the first call? How many demand failures are you handling (repeat calls because something was not followed up on correctly or in a timely fashion?). I’d say figure out what makes you money and what costs you money and start measuring how service helps or hurts either goal."

"Monitoring, feedback, side by side monitoring and coaching and monitoring your attrition. Obviously no one likes to be on hold for very long so monitoring the average wait time, and your queue size, it's all aspects of the customer contact that matter, however the last thing a customer is going to remember is a rude agent or an "I can't be bothered" attitude."

"There are various methods available to measure the service levels. But unfortunately these are mostly post experience feedback methods, the damage having been done already. At Servion, we believe that a customer experiences a brand in one of only two ways - through the use of the products / offerings of the company, or through the interaction with the company in the service cycle. In the service cycle, the customer’s experience is purely a function of her expectations and how they are met. And the expectations she carries are purely a function of her perception of the brand.
The experience of having enabled billions of customer interactions for multiple industry verticals over the last decade has provided us with the knowledge base to measure the level of service by measuring the gap between customer expectation and experience which directly impacts customer retention or churn. The Contact Optimization Model© zeroes in on such gaps at each point of contact and each stage of the interaction, thereby providing an in-depth view of the overall service and the experience thereof."

"Accessibility measures like Service Level, Call Quality Monitoring for accuracy and soft skills as well as real time surveys for customer feedback."

"Contact centres should find out what their customers want and then measure those things. For example a great contact centre experience counts for nothing if the fulfillment is inadequate. There is a need to measure contact centres as part of the whole customer experience. I would always advocate involving customers in determining these measures."

"Technical SLAs and KPIs such as time to answer a call, time to close a customer interaction (as measured by the customer not the call centre), time to complete a business process etc. There should also be a reasonably comprehensive measure against customer satisfaction, such as the customer contact experience, the time to be dealt with, the time to complete whatever was needed, accuracy of information/bills etc"

"Move away from "service level" (percentage of calls answered in a specific timeframe) and create a scorecard which encompasses what clients value. Survey the customer base to identify what is really important to them. Clients will be able to tell you if they are more impressed with low (or no) wait times on the phone or "doing it right the first time". This in turn, will give you the opportunity to weigh score card components accordingly. For example, if clients have no tolerance for errors and are willing to wait a little longer on the phone, then "first call resolution" will be weighted heavier on our scorecard than the "speed of answer". Avoid the law of averages when determining the components of the customer experience scorecard. Instead of measuring the average speed of answer, look at how often you meet the speed of answer target (i.e. percentage of half hour intervals when the speed of answer target was achieved)."

"I believe there is no one measure of customer service. Service is a complex interaction that cannot be contained in simple terms. Still, I do argue that the customer is the ultimate judge of a service interaction. Ask good quality questions about that interaction and you'll get good quality information back to make successful modifications to your service. And at the same time, some basic foundations and standards of good "communication" also figure highly for me in my measurement of good service, most of which I derive from good old Neurolinguistic and Social theory."

"Yes. It is the only way we can find out if our client's are getting what they are paying for -- that we are taking care of their customers for them."

"Customer surveys should carry the most weight as they are the true measure of the service you are delivering. Real time, short surveys via the phone system work the best as the issue and call is still fresh in their minds. Email surveys that are the right length and delivered as closely to the call as possible can also work well."

"1st - speed to answer call, 2nd - first time resolution, 3rd - dedicated quality assurance team that monitors calls for accuracy and customer service soft skills. Feedback within 48 hours."

"Ask the users. Use several different strands to do so including automated and manual methods. Bring in experts to help don't think it is a waste of money - they can help you just have to make sure you use the right ones. You also have to implement change when necessary and not when not needed."

"Customer feedback. Giving the customer the opportunity to tell you how you are doing is the best way to measure your level of service. Collecting customer satisfaction and customer retention rates is one way of measuring such success. Epicor uses automated support incident surveys that are sent to the customer after a call is closed. The customer then has the opportunity to rate us on our timeliness, professionalism, attitude and their overall happiness with the service we provided. We receive more than 500 responses a week that we review and log. Additionally, our staff receives bonuses based on the responses. Today, Epicor’s customer satisfaction rate is at a record high of 9.4 (based on a scale of 1-10) with a 94 percent customer retention rate for our 20,000-plus customers worldwide."

"At the highest stage of Contact Center development - customer satisfaction is the clue. At lowest stages - we should like on general KPI's like FCR, SL, ABN rate etc"

"Length of time waiting, the number of return calls. Customers are happy to wait, but only for a few minutes - However what is MOST important is that when they have waited they have their enquiry fully resolved without being passed around the organisation or having to call back."

"KPI's indicators in accordance with business requests."

"Simply through the Voice of the Customer (Customer Satisfaction) which means survey and measure your customers that use the contact center and determine whether your moment of truth met their expectations. Primarily expectation versus perception or what I call the EvP factor which is a measure I use in some of my research."

"Typical measures that ensure a well-rounded view... Service Level (% calls answered within certain period of time), abandon rate (customers who disconnect before speaking with someone live), IVR abandonment (customers who abandon in IVR before speaking with an agent), FCR (first call resolution, or perhaps repeat call rate), Quality (internal measure of process adherence), and Customer Satisfaction (feedback obtained directly from customers about performance and their perception of quality). Goals should be visible and well-known by all. Results should be posted daily or by interval throughout the day, and individual agents should be able to see how their performance ranks against all others. People want a clear understanding of what's expected of them, and most then want to rise to that challenge given the proper environment."