Insights

Optimising Call Centre Performance with Conversion Analytics Software

The primary goal of a call centre is to deliver a service to anyone who interacts with your company. Call centres don’t look to be going anywhere, with surveys completed by Hubspot and Salesforce indicating that the majority of customers prefer to communicate issues via live calls. But a good experience remains of critical importance, with numerous studies suggesting that a high percentage of customers have moved to competitors following a poor experience with a brand.

A huge part of providing high quality service is monitoring, analysing and adjusting your processes. Conversion analytics uses recording, transcription, call boosting classifying and scoring to unlock valuable insights into the experience customers have. These insights can be used to improve training, provide actionable feedback and refine scripts.

The result? Improved customer service and a more refined call centre performance.

What are KPIs?

One such way to measure improvements as a result of integrating conversion analytics is to look at KPIs. Key performance indicators can be used to determine the success of your call centre over a set period of time. They can indicate whether a call centre is falling short, meeting or exceeding the goals it has set.

Analytics drives success, and KPIs are an important metric for any organisation to measure its success. 

Why are they useful?

KPIs are useful because they allow you to track a call centre’s progress against its targets, objectives or industry peers. They are an objective, measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving its key business objectives.

Setting clear, measurable and achievable KPIs can strengthen the morale of your employees. Call handlers who feel they have clearly laid out objectives will be more motivated to work hard and achieve them. KPIs can help call handlers to feel supported and motivated. When KPIs have been achieved, rewards can be given and there will be a sense of satisfaction across the board.

As a company gets larger, there can be a disconnect between the company’s achievements and the achievements of the individual. Individual KPIs can help recognise the efforts of each individual call handler, enabling them to engage better with their role and feel less like a cog in a machine.

Example of KPIs

Formulating the right set of KPIs is key to helping you accurately track how well your contact centre is doing. A small but actionable set of KPIs is more helpful than too many, which can demotivate agents by being too difficult to achieve.

Handlers with a large number of KPIs to meet will feel unmotivated and unconfident. It’s thought that the optimum number of KPIs for most areas of a business is between four and ten. You should make sure KPIs are SMART. That is:

Some of the KPIs to consider implementing in order to improve customer service include:

Time to Respond

Customers who have spent a long time in a queue will be frustrated, and agents will have to work extra hard to ensure the customer hangs up the phone having had a good experience.

The average time to answer is the amount of time from when an inbound call is received until it is answered by an agent. This metric can help measure the accessibility of an agent to customers. If the queue time is too long, customers will become disgruntled and job satisfaction amongst agents will be affected.

Abandon Rate

A high abandon rate can often lead to a reduction in customer loyalty. The abandon rate measures the number of callers who hang up before they reach a call handler. Abandon rate may increase if the queue time is too long, or in the case of technical difficulties.

Agent Attrition Rate

This metric is a measure of staff turnover. Unfortunately, call centres have a higher than average staff turnover, and it’s up to team leaders and managers to ensure the working environment is positive.

A high agent attrition rate will increase costs and reduce a call centre’s ability to provide good service. Existing agents may become overworked and stressed, leading a drop of engagement in their role.

Reducing agent attrition can be achieved by providing clear and regular feedback to agents, prioritising training, and cultivating a happy and healthy work environment.

First Call Resolution

Arguably the most important metric for customer service call centres is first call resolution. This is the measure of a contact centre’s success in solving a customer query after just one call. It’s often seen as the best measure of call centre efficiency, and can lead to more positive experiences for both agent and caller.

In fact, studies have shown that it’s being shuffled from one agent to another that customers find most frustrating about call centres.

While more experienced agents will likely have a higher first call resolution score, trainees may need to transfer to another agent depending on the issue. Automatic call distribution can be vital here, routing in-bound calls to the agent best equipped to handle the inquiry.

Cost Per Call

Measuring the cost per call will show team leaders how much it costs a call centre to run its operation. It’s a good way to determine whether a contact centre is running cost-efficiently.

This can be measured by adding the total cost of calls over a given period, divided by the total number of calls overall in that period.

Cost per call can be reduced by improving staff training, providing agents with technology that helps them solve queries efficiently, and investing in self-service options such as a Live Chat feature.

Average Handling Time

Average handling time (AHT) is the length of time from when an agent answers a call until they are disconnected. This can vary based on the customer’s issue and agent experience.

This is a good measure of the overall efficiency of your contact centre, as if the handling time increases across the board, technical problems could be to blame. On the other hand, if it’s just a couple of agents bringing up the average handling time, they may need some extra help.

Factors that increase the average handling time include slow computer systems, poor training and agents having to switch between multiple systems.

It’s worth noting that AHT has in the past been misused, encouraging agents to focus on speed of service as opposed to quality. Too much focus on AHT may drive agents to cut off calls as they approach their target, or transfer difficult customers to a different department.

While average handling time is certainly worth looking at, some contact centres which have removed this metric found their customer service levels and first call resolution improved.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

This metric measures a customer’s satisfaction with products, services or interactions with your business. Integrated call support allows you to measure customer satisfaction as a KPI. It can be obtained using a customer satisfaction survey which is sent to the caller following an agent’s interaction with them.

EvaluAgent offers integrations which provide surveys for customers to fill in post-call. This’ll allow you to identify where customers are having issues, and ensure that what you think is good service aligns with the thoughts of the customer.

How Evaluagent software can help track KPIs

Using EvaluAgent’s software, KPIs can be set, tracked and used to streamline processes. Our auto-QA platform automatically monitors and records any contact an agent has with a customer, whether that’s a call, live chat, email or ticket. By providing team leaders with such a comprehensive insight into their operations, more accurate KPIs can be set.

If a certain agent is regularly falling short of meeting their key performance indicator, EvaluAgent’s quality assurance software can help team leaders to understand why.

If QA scores remain consistent but the KPIs are not being met, it could be that performance metrics need readdressing.

Alternatively, if KPIs such as call handling time are being met but QA scores are falling short or conversations are being flagged, alternative KPIs may be required. It may be that agents are being told to prioritise the wrong metrics, such as short handling time over quality service.

Wanting to optimise performance in your call centre? Arrange a free trial of EvaluAgent’s quality assurance software, or get in touch for more information on our platforms.