Operating a productive call center is best measured in key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the agents, their processes and the call center software. KPIs are defined as measurable values that demonstrate how effectively a company, department, team or individual is achieving business goals. Before managers select the most relevant KPIs for their call center, they must first identify which KPIs line up best with the corporate strategy and business objectives. Then with the overall company goal in place managers are able to make informed decisions on the accurate KPIs needed to track performance. Take a look through the most common call center KPIs broken down into four categories; customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, business value, and people management. Always remember though, the key to success becomes what you do with the data after it is collected, measured and analyzed.

Customer Satisfaction

Average Time in Queue – This indicates if your team is providing customers with quality service. This KPI is the total time callers wait in the call queues divided by the total number of calls answered by agents.

Call Abandonment Rate – The percentage of callers that hung up before reaching an agent. This KPI is vital for customer-centric call centers to measure customer retention.

Average Speed of Answer – The average time it takes for calls to be answered in the call center during a specific time frame. Typically used by managers to assess their team’s efficiency and degree of accessibility to their callers.

Service Level – The percentage of calls answered with a specified number of seconds.

Percentage of Calls Blocked – The number of inbound calls that received the busy tone when they call because of either no available agents or the call center software cannot handle the level of call volume.

First Call Resolution – The percentage of calls that an agent completely addresses the caller’s needs without having to transfer, escalate or return the call.

Customer Satisfaction – This KPI can be acquired from several sources such as customer surveys and quality assurance measurements to analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of a call center.

Operational Efficiency

Agent Occupancy – How long the agent spends on live calls as well as completing the work associated with the particular call.

Average Handle Time – This elapsed time from when an agent answers a call until the agent disconnects is one of the most commonly analyzed KPIs in the call center industry.

Business Value

Sales Per Agent Hour – This directly tracks the call efficiency of your team by measuring sales and total calls.

Sales Conversion Rate – Used in correlation with the Total Sales KPI to make sure quality leads are converting to customers. This will reveal how much revenue is coming in per successful call.

People Management

Agent Absenteeism – The number of days lost per year due to agents being absent. This measures the health of the call center to develop budgets and optimize workforce management practices.

Agent Turnover Rate – Management tracks this metric over time to determine turnover rate of the percentage of agents who leave the call center.

These general KPIs provide call center managers with multiple inbound and outbound call center metrics to analyze performance data and evaluate current capabilities. Consistently measuring this data over time will enable managers to make data-driven decisions that will increase customer satisfaction and the further the corporate strategy.

Now that you have a better understanding regarding what KPIs need to be measured in order to assess your call center’s efficiency, click here to learn how our cloud-based platform provides you with real-time reporting to accurately measure these metrics.