A positive customer experience is important for the loyalty and image of your company. We show which KPIs are essential for call centers and can significantly improve your customer service.
The personal conversation by call center employees is particularly crucial here. It is therefore important to analyze the degree of customer satisfaction during these conversations and to determine key figures that make an evaluation possible. Only in this way can you quickly identify whether there is room for improvement in order to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of your service processes.
KPIs for call centers
When managing a contact center, many aspects are particularly important. The friendliness of the agents is just as important as an efficient processing time of the inquiries in order to keep waiting times low. Data must be available quickly and can be entered without much effort. It must also be possible to forward data to colleagues in other departments quickly and easily. This leads to a huge flood of data, making it all the more important to measure the right KPIs and monitor them over the long term.
What is a KPI?
A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a measurable value that shows how effective a company, department, team or employee is and whether set goals are being met. Depending on what exactly needs to be monitored and what type of call center it is – outbound and/or inbound, sales or customer service – there are a variety of KPIs that are suitable for measuring, controlling and optimizing customer communication. We have summarized the most important ones for you:
Average handling time (AHT)
The AHT is used to measure the average time an agent needs to process a customer interaction. This includes the time the employee spends on the call or chat and all associated work.
First contact resolution (FCR)
The FCR shows the percentage of customer contacts that are resolved during the first interaction with an agent. The FCR is one of the most important key figures for measuring customer satisfaction and the efficiency of call center employees.
Average call duration
This is an important metric to know how many calls your team can handle in a working day. Compared to the number of calls, this is the quickest way to see if the size of the team is right. It also gives you insight into the efficiency and performance of each agent. Of course, every customer needs attention and time, and not every request is handled equally quickly. But if an employee is particularly out of the ordinary, you can react and intervene in a supportive manner. Supervisor functions such as monitoring or live training provide additional support. Based on your evaluations, you can also define an optimal call duration and set it as a target for the team.
Average waiting time
Average waiting time is an enormously important metric. It has a direct impact – positive or negative – on the customer experience. This KPI is calculated by dividing the total waiting time of all calls made by the call center by the sum of all calls answered by agents. The metric is also an indicator of whether your team can handle the current call volume and provide optimal service.
Number of calls answered
This metric helps you identify how many calls were answered overall by your team, as well as by individual agents. This is where particularly hardworking employees can stand out and their accomplishments can be highlighted. Some call center managers place this number above all other metrics. This is only partially advisable if the quality of the calls is also taken into account.
Percentage of abandoned calls
This metric determines on one side the percentage of all calls that were abandoned by the customer before being answered by an agent and on the other side the number of abandonments during a call. This gives you important insights into where and why abandonment occurs along the communication process.
Call volume by time of day
Call centers often experience significant peaks in call volume at certain times of the day. This metric helps you identify how many total calls can be answered in a given time. Based on this, the number of employees can be increased or decreased at a certain time of day. In service call centers with particularly long opening hours, shift changes are often scheduled to coincide with the hours with the highest call volumes in order to have more employees available overlapping.
Sentiment Analysis – Sentiment as a KPI
The mood of callers provides many clues about how well your employees can respond to their needs. You can gain particularly deep insights by comparing the sentiment score at the beginning of the calls with the score at the end of the calls. An analysis in terms of frequently occurring terms and the associated mood of the callers also provides many exciting insights. For example, if conversations about a particular product are remarkably positive or negative, this gives your company many opportunities for product management, development or marketing.
More tips for customer service
Real-time statistics give you an overview at all times. Continuous monitoring allows you to recognize immediately when bottlenecks occur and react quickly. This helps you to make the right decisions at an early stage. So you can resolve potential problems and flexibly adjust your capacities to the current call volume.
With LinkThat CORE, you have everything under control. Our fully integrated contact center with AI support provides you with powerful analysis and reporting tools that give you valuable insights into your customer service.
Whether your call center focuses more on service or sales, there are numerous other KPIs to help you ensure the quality of your work and create meaningful reports. If you have any questions or need support, we look forward to advising you personally!