Using Metrics to Define Inbound Call Center Agent Productivity

Customer service is supreme, which is why most companies today take their customer satisfaction very seriously. Since customers have numerous options in the market and they can switch to another provider anytime, thus companies take their services very seriously. After all, who would like to lose a loyal partner or a potential lead to the competitor?

Since outsourcing has grown with time and the inbound call center services have taken off widely, it is vital to keep a check on the agents’ productivity, as the agents are the ones who reach out to the customers ultimately. Agents have to be patient, considerate, interactive and should possess adequate market knowledge to answer the customer well.

To keep a check that your customer is being answered well by the agents, there are some points that companies need to consider. What are they?

Well, the key performance indicators that signify the performance of agents are listed below check out:

1. Call Abandonment Rate

To decipher whether your call center agent delivers optimum customer satisfaction, a check on call abandonment rate is essential. The more the call abandonment rate, the lower will be customer satisfaction. If the agent is not able to take calls and gets busy with some other task, it reduces the customers’ belief in the business service, which is why reducing abandonment is vital.

Contrarily, this metric will not tell much about particular agents’ behavior; however, it defines their productivity scale. If an agent is not able to take many calls, their productivity declines. If an agents’ average call abandonment rate is too high, it means that their productivity is continuously declining.

Call center companies here need to make sure that they train their agents efficiently on-time, as it helps the new agents know that call abandonment can have detrimental effects on the business brand name. So if your agent’s abandonment rate is increasing, help them out with easing the call process.

2. Numbers of Calls Blocked

The agents’ productivity is adequately calculated according to the percentage of calls blocked. The more blocked numbers mean that the agent has ended up with a negative interaction with most of the customers compelling her/him to block the customer.

Agents need to understand that the customer might not be in the right mood after experiencing a negative service from the business. Thus it is the time to console them rather correcting them unnecessarily. Call center companies need to train their agents on the same so that the agent knows what and how to answer.

After all, if the number of blocked calls keeps on increasing, it means you need to rectify and help the agents learn techniques to woo the customers’ interest.

3. Call Queued Rate

When the business call volume increases, the time of customers in queues to get their calls answered increases too. Under such situations, businesses need to have a team of inbound call center agents to look after multiple calls. A single agent will not be able to handle multiple calls; thus an adequate team is necessary.

To make sure that the agent is performing well, check the average time in the queue. If agents spend too much time on one agent and neglect the next call, it will ultimately ruin the business brand name. Thus, train the agents to reduce their average time in the queue and move on to the next call.

Allow your customers a call back service so that they get along the customers who have tried reaching. By doing so, gaining back the customers’ trust becomes easier.

As a call center manager, if you find your agents’ queue rate increasing day by day, help them with lowering their KPI score and make them understand how it helps in the end.

4. Service Level

Since agents have to take calls 24X7, their productivity metrics can be measured in real-time. The more calls an agent answers successfully maintaining customer satisfaction, the higher she/he is rated on service level.

Agents should always be trained on service level management and should understand that they need not stick on one call justifying things to the customer.  It is rather important to forward the call to an expert or assure the customer that their problem would be resolved soon if there is a technical glitch.

5. Answering Speed

When you are measuring the call centre agents’ productivity, the average speed of answer plays a crucial role.

Imagine an agent taking a long time to answer a simple call. In such circumstances, the KPI of the agent will diminish.

This is the reason, agents need to be trained enough to answer multiple calls repeatedly and that too swiftly.

When agents take a lot of time, it ultimately irritates the customer compelling them to look for a better provider who saves time and resolves queries easily.

6. Call Handle Time

Call handle time is among the known ways to analyse agent productivity. Since call centres record the customer-business communication, thus analysing the call is easy for the managers.

Gaining adequate results from calls is not easy. However, companies can define the average time taken to answer a call so that the agents’ stick to the same, and the analysis becomes easier.

If the agent is taking too long, she/he may have a lower KPI than an agent who resolved the same issue easily and shifted to another call.

The agent’s call handle time should not be too long nor too short. If the time is too short, it signifies that the customer did not like interacting with the agent or maybe disconnected the call due to some server problem.

If the call is too long, it signifies that the agent is not able to influence the customer early and the issue is unresolved.

In both cases, the agents’ KPI declines.

7. Occupancy Rate

The occupancy rate defines the time that the agent spends on live calls or to finish any task for the call centre. To measure the agents’ productivity, the occupancy rate always helps. It helps to define how much time the agent spends in performing the business duties and thus companies can keep a regular check on the agent’s proficiency and extracting data on productivity from the same.

8. First Call Resolution (FCR)

This is yet again one of the most intelligent ways to determine the agents’ productivity. When an agent succeeds to resolve a customer concern in the first go, she/he earns first call resolution.

If a customer calls back repeatedly or gets into any miscommunication with the customer, the supervisor ultimately handles the call, which highlights that the agents’ FCR rate has declined.

Such an example is not a sign for any answering agent, thus agents need to be trained to attain first call resolution always or forward the call to an expert rather getting into unwanted communication with the customer when they are unable to resolve the query.

Ending Statement

Call centre managers have to keep a regular check on each agents’ performance as the staff handles various functions including outbound and inbound call centre services. With the above-mentioned metrics, one can easily define call centre agents’ productive/non-productive hours. Nevertheless, if we talk about things that can help determine the agents’ skills more, then customer satisfaction and average after-call work rate matter the most.

DepositPhotos – call center

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