Imagine if you could gain focused insights into not just what you’re getting right for customers, but also into those make-or-break moments where your agents go above and beyond to cinch that deal in the nick of time.
Even better, what if you could understand the precise moment, word, or tactic that secured the deal… and you could roll that tactic out across your call centre to optimise performance and drive conversions every single time?
That’s where call centre tracking and metrics come in. Tracking the right metrics can unlock a wealth of insights that will make your call centre operations more effective than ever. With real customer data at your fingertips, you can improve call centre operations, deliver exceptional customer services and boost your bottom-line effortlessly.
In this blog, we’ll discuss four metrics that are guaranteed to optimise call centre performance and help you understand exactly what you need to do to track them properly.
How do call centres track performance?
Before we get to the good stuff, how exactly do call centres track performance? Many businesses that are determined to grow their leads and improve their call agent performance are using call centre tracking systems to track the metrics that matter.
Many have KPIs (key performance indicators) in place, which can help them understand how they’re performing against revenue expectations and customer targets. There are tons of call centre metrics you can track, from abandonment rate to FAQs. We’re going to focus on the ones that are guaranteed to optimise call centre performance. Which call centre metrics should be tracked to optimise performance?
Average handle time
Average handle time (AHT) tracks the amount of team your call centre teams are spending on a call with customers. It begins as soon as the agent picks up the call and ends when they disconnect. Tracking this metric provides a starting point to optimise performance, allowing you to gain greater insight into how efficiently your top performers are engaging customers.
With tools like Conversation Analytics and Agent ID, you can gain actionable insights in to how engaging the calls coming in, and going out, of your contact centre are. You can uncover the best calls to use for training, rapidly upskill your teams and decrease average handling time, all while increasing conversion rates and ensuring that your customers are truly satisfied, without increasing waiting times and potentially missing opportunities.
Contact quality
Contact quality is a useful overarching metric which attempts to score the quality of the call your agents have with customers. It can contain things such as whether their queries were answered satisfactorily and the overall tone of the conversation. By understanding the quality of an interaction with your team, you can optimise appropriately.
Call intelligence software can monitor conversations to flag keywords or trends before you’re even aware of them and tie these trends to positive or negative call outcomes, so you know what to do more, or less of. You can pinpoint those golden words and phrases that transform callers into happy customers, so you can get intelligent with how you train your agents. Use customer intel to create scripts that will help almost guarantee conversion and upselling.
Conversion rate
Directly linked to lead generation and revenue, conversion rate is the percentage of people that make a purchase on the call. If your business relies on phone calls to convert leads into customers, monitoring conversion rate is key to understanding how effective your agents are at driving purchase and other revenue-driven actions such as upselling and increasing average order value.
There are a couple of ways you can measure conversion rate. The first is a calculation in which you divide the number of phone calls that led to conversions by the total number of phone calls received. For example, if you achieved 50 conversions from 1,000 contact centre calls, your conversion rate would be around 5%. But this isn’t always accurate, as it fails to recognise initial interactions. You may prefer to record initial interactions as warm leads and set a timeframe for conversion, then divide the number of conversions by the number of warm leads over a time period.
The second is using a tool such as Conversation Analytics, which is one of the easiest ways to gather insights needed to increase average order value, improve upselling, reduce the cost per conversion, and reduce churn. A great example of this comes from Access Self Storage, the UK’s fastest growing self-storage and office space rental company. During the pandemic, they experienced a 35% increase in calls in response to a rapidly changing market. Using Infinity, they were able to reduce their contact centre costs by 50% without comprising on the number of calls they could handle, increasing their conversion rate by 35% year-on-year.
First contact resolution
First contact resolution (FCR) is one of the best ways of understanding how satisfied your customers really are. If you’re able to provide solutions without needing to escalate, transfer or handle a call back, you can be assured that you’re saving time for both your agents and your customers.
Call tracking software can quickly identify repeated contact within a certain period, helping you understand how many calls the average customer makes before they’re satisfied. Plus, you can measure the effectiveness of follow-up calls – and what was said – to improve the efficiency of your agents and help focus their energy on the opportunities that will have real impact for your revenue.
Want to find out more about how to take your contact centre to the next level? Start a conversation with us today about Agent ID and Conversation Analytics.
