How to Measure Call Quality Parameters

When it comes to customer service, nothing will bring a business to its knees faster than bad customer service. A startling 71% of consumers will end a business relationship due to a poor customer service experience.

Staying on top of call quality, and always looking at ways to improve it, is at the top of every call centre manager’s “to do” list. And call centres that focus on measuring and improving their call quality parameters will find it easier to satisfy clients, stand out from their competition, and even find new customers when call quality is strong.

What Metrics Measure Call Quality?

There are many factors that contribute to an overall productive score when it comes to call quality, and some businesses might measure different KPIs depending on their industry or agent expectations.

However, the following KPIs are most used when it comes to measuring call quality:

• Customer Satisfaction
• First-Call Resolution
•  Service Level
•  Contact Quality
•  Average Handling Rate
• Net Promoter Scores (NPS)

We’ll take a closer look at these call centre QA metrics and explain why proper attention to each will help you improve call quality.

Customer Satisfaction

Perhaps nothing is more important than knowing how your customers feel about their experience with your company. This metric puts a finger on the pulse about whether or not your customer service agents are effective and in what areas they need improvement.

First-Call Resolution

First-call resolution (FCR) refers to the percentage of calls that are resolved during the first call between the customer and the call centre. This QA metric is important because it plays a major role in helping reduce customer churn rates.

According to SQM Group, 38% of customers are likely to churn if their issue isn’t resolved after the first call. Compare that to only 3% of customers who, when their problem is solved during the first service interaction, wind up likely to churn. The most effective means of customer service is solving a problem quickly, and your FCR rate can tell you exactly how well you are doing this.

Service Level

This call centre QA metric measures agent productivity in real-time based on the percentage of calls answered within a specific number of seconds.

The most common measuring stick used here is the 80/20 rule, as customer service managers typically aim to have 80% of calls answered within 20 seconds. This would be their service level goal for the call centre.

To increase your service level, you could consider reducing the duration of answering calls. However, it is also essential to observe what happens when your agents connect with customers.

Are they prepped for the call? Do they have an idea of what the customer wants? Agents need to be properly equipped with the correct information about a caller for tailored conversations.

Contact Quality

This metric analyzes call recordings to evaluate agents on things like courtesy and professionalism, how accurate their information is, and how effective they are at capturing customer data. This qualitative review helps call centres to develop a consistent tone and message that agents are instructed to use on every phone call.

To effectively track this, you need to pay attention to details like appropriate call scripts or language, effective customer data capturing — providing customers with relevant, accurate information. You need to keep an eye on contact quality to identify potential leaks in the overall delivery of quality customer service.

Average Handle Time

Also referred to as Average Handling Rate (AHR), this call centre QA metric tracks the amount of time that customers spend on each call with your team, from the time an agent picks up the phone until the time the call is completed.

While the standard for this metric often varies by industry, most call centres will aim to reduce average handling rates as much as they can. Low AHR means that reps are more efficient and that you need fewer employees to staff your phones.

Net Promoter Scores

Net promoter scores (NPS) gauge loyalty and customer experience. Often, NPS is based on customer response to a single question: “How likely is it that you would recommend this agent or company?”

Scoring is based on a sliding scale, with 9 and 10 being promoters, 7 to 8 are passive, and 0 to 6 are described as detractors. You get the NPS from subtracting the percentage of detractors from promoters. A score of over 50 is considered acceptable.

You can get valuable feedback from NPS scores and strong NPS scores go hand-in-hand with positive revenue and business growth.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Scorebuddy – View the Original Article

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Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.