Top 5 Customer Service Call Center Key Performance Indicators

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How Does YOUR Call Center Stack Up?

Call Center KPIs

The Five Most Important Performance Indicators for Customer Service Call Centers

Introduction

Today’s call center technologies and reporting packages make it easy to capture copious amounts of performance data.  Most call center managers can tell you everything from last month’s average speed of answer to yesterday’s average handle time.  But what does it all mean?  If my abandonment rate goes up, but my cost per call goes down, is that good or bad?  Is my call center performing better this month than it was last month?

Despite all the data that call center managers have at their fingertips, most cannot answer a very basic question: How is my call center performing?  Perhaps worse, many call center managers are unaware of the critical role – beyond mere measurement – that Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can and should play in the call center.  This includes the ability to track and trend performance, identify, diagnose, and correct performance problems, and to establish performance goals and assign accountability for achieving the goals.

An increasing number of progressive call centers recognize that when it comes to performance metrics, less really is more!  They have discovered the 80/20 rule as it applies to call center performance measurement.  These world-class call centers have learned that the effective application of just five KPIs is all that is required for measuring, managing, and continuously improving their call center performance.

In this article, MetricNet (www.metricnet.com), a leading source of online benchmarks and a pioneer in call center benchmarking, identifies and defines the five most important performance metrics for customer support call centers.  They provide benchmark ranges for these metrics, and offer a creative approach for combining these metrics into a single, all-inclusive measure of call center performance.