Agent salaries and benefits represent more than half of all service delivery costs. As a result, if agent utilization is high, cost will be correspondingly low. Conversely, when agent utilization is low, agent costs, and hence cost per contact or cost per ticket, will be correspondingly high. Just as world-class service delivery organizations are obsessive about maintaining high customer satisfaction levels, they are equally committed to keeping their costs in check. They do this primarily by maintaining tight control over agent utilization. This has the effect of minimizing cost per contact and cost per ticket. That said, extremely high agent utilization can actually increase your costs by driving agent turnover and absenteeism higher. Whenever agent utilization rates approach 60–70 percent, a service desk will experience relatively high agent turnover because they are pushing the agents too hard. Extremely high utilization leads to burnout, higher turnover, higher absenteeism, and lower morale in the service desk. Learn how to capture and calculate agent utilization in this new MetricNet webcast! Additionally, Jeff Rumburg will reveal why this KPI is so important, share the key drivers of agent utilization, and provide benchmarking ranges for this critical KPI.
