The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices & Networking

Mar 21, 2011 -- From its poll of senior contact centre decision makers, ProtoCall One, a provider of contact centre consultancy and systems integrator, has revealed how contact centres are slowly moving away from using operational-based metrics to adopting customer-centric metrics such as NPS, but are still not focused enough on recording and using customer satisfaction data.

Nearly all (95%) of the respondents stated that their contact centres are using call volume metrics such as call abandon rate, average speed of answer and average call length to measure agent performance. Workforce metrics such as schedule adherence were used by 64% of respondents. Quality and customer-centric metrics are not as widely used, with 59% measuring agents on first call resolution, 41% using independent customer satisfaction research and 27% using NPS to evaluate agents.

Less than one in twenty (4%) of respondents always invite their customers to take part in an incentivised customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey after a call, with 30% of respondents inviting a selection of callers to participate in CSAT telephone or web surveys. 43% of contact centres rely on regular external market research surveys to receive customer feedback. Worryingly, 30% of respondents stated they do not have a reliable method for measuring CSAT.

When asked about plans for improving customer satisfaction during 2011, 68% of respondents stated they were looking to cut back or make more effective use of their interactive voice response (IVR) systems, with 64% looking to improving the skills match of agents to caller’s needs. More use of customer callbacks was on the agenda for 14% of respondents, and over one in four (27%) respondents stated they would work on improving the company culture.

ProtoCall One polled over 40 senior contact centre decision makers at its Genesys Workforce Management User Group forum held in Solihull on 1st December 2010

Andy Turner, solutions director ProtoCall One and founder of its Genesys Workforce Management Forum, said: "It is encouraging to see the adoption of more customer oriented measurements such as NPS which are intricately linked with improving overall company performance. There is still too much reliance on operational metrics such as average speed of answer; a longer wait for a call to be answered would be overlooked by a customer if they get an effective resolution to their problem.

Contact centres need to work much harder in terms of capturing customer satisfaction data – simple tools such as always inviting customers to take part in a quick survey after a call will provide valuable real-time customer satisfaction data which can quickly be fed back to the agents."

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, news correspondent
Source: http://www.prlog.org

About Protocall One:
ProtoCall One is a leading consultancy and systems integrator specialising in Virtual Contact Centres and Workforce Optimisation solutions enabling Genesys and non-Genesys contact centre operators to deliver excellence in customer service. We assist businesses from all business sectors to improve how they connect with their customers across multiple contact channels, increase customer loyalty and revenue, reduce operating costs and improve employee satisfaction. ProtoCall One has experience of more than forty major Genesys implementations and is widely recognised as one of the most experienced Genesys consultancy & support organisations globally.