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4 Call Center Agent Performance Metrics You Might Be Overlooking

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Transforming your call center into a thriving hub of customer satisfaction requires the right blend of efficient agents who can effortlessly meet customer needs. But have you considered the untapped power of agent performance metrics?

These four overlooked or, at the very least, underestimated metrics hold the key to unlocking a data-driven strategy that maximizes your agents’ contributions and revolutionizes your customer experience.

1. Average Hold Time

Average hold time is a crucial metric that measures the duration a call center agent keeps a customer on hold during an inbound call. Unsurprisingly, long hold times can swiftly lead to customer frustration and a diminished experience.

When assessing agent performance, it’s imperative to investigate their average hold time and identify any red flags. Elevated hold rates may indicate a need for assistance or additional training, struggles locating essential information to assist the customer, or delays caused by sluggish or limited technology. While some hold time is understandable, consistently high hold rates warrant a thorough evaluation.

Hold times significantly impact the overall average handling time of customer interactions, a vital key performance indicator (KPI) for evaluating the center’s operational performance. Excessive hold rates can disrupt a call center manager’s ability to appropriately staff their team and effectively develop agent schedules and forecasts. Call centers can enhance customer satisfaction and operational efficiency by addressing and optimizing hold times.

2. Answer Rate

Answer rate measures the percentage of calls an agent successfully answers out of the total number of calls they are presented with. It plays an important role in determining the overall service level of the call center and provides valuable insights into an agent’s accessibility compared to their teammates.

While a high answer rate indicates good availability, it’s important to note that accessibility alone doesn’t guarantee the effective resolution of customer issues in a timely or satisfactory manner. However, analyzing answer rates can shed light on agent activity. If agents are seen to be procrastinating or engaging in non-essential tasks, leading to delays in answering inbound customer calls, it presents clear opportunities for improvement and optimization. Call centers can enhance their overall performance by addressing these issues and providing a better customer experience.

3. Average After-Call Work Time (ACW)

A call center agent’s responsibilities continue after hanging up with a customer. They often must fill out necessary fields regarding the purpose of the customer’s call, how they handled the issue, and whether further assistance from a manager was required. This post-call work, known as After-Call Work (ACW), also includes the time agents must take a breath, refocus, and prepare for the next incoming call.

By monitoring ACW, team leaders can identify agents who complete post-call tasks exceptionally quickly or slowly. This analysis can reveal valuable insights, such as discovering individuals who have found more efficient ways to handle these tasks than their peers. On the other hand, extremely short ACW times might indicate that agents are not taking detailed notes or completing all necessary after-call activities.

Additionally, excessive ACW durations can signal that agents struggle with inputting information promptly or may even intentionally avoid taking customer calls. In such cases, it becomes crucial to reassess the approach to post-call work and explore strategies to lower the averages appropriately. This might involve automating specific post-call tasks or providing retraining opportunities to help agents work more efficiently. Call centers can enhance productivity and overall performance by optimizing the ACW process.

4. Transfer Rate

Transfer rate refers to the percentage of calls agents transfer to someone else within the organization. Typically, calls are transferred when the answering agent cannot fulfill the customer’s request due to a lack of training or access to the necessary tools.

Understanding the average transfer rate of your call center provides management with a valuable metric for evaluating individual agents. If an agent has a transfer rate significantly higher than the average, it warrants further investigation to determine the reasons behind this trend. It could indicate insufficient training or knowledge to address the specific needs of calls directed to their department.

Comparing an agent’s transfer rate to their average handle time is also helpful in assessing agent productivity. A high transfer rate and a low average handle time might suggest that the agent selectively chooses calls and transfers them to other teams instead of assisting the customer. Conversely, a high transfer rate and average handle time could indicate that an agent is struggling and would benefit from additional coaching and support.

By closely monitoring the transfer rate and its relationship to other performance metrics, call center managers can identify areas for improvement, optimize agent productivity, and ensure efficient handling of customer inquiries.

Transforming raw engagement data into actionable intelligence has never been more accessible and efficient.

TCI works with call center leaders like Mitel and Brightmetrics to empower you with the convenience and adaptability to analyze and explore your UC and contact center data, allowing you to gain deep insights into your agents’ strengths and areas for improvement.

By leveraging historical and real-time dashboards, you can access intuitive drag-and-drop tools to effortlessly visualize performance metrics, plan effective strategies, and enhance agent performance and customer experience with just a few simple clicks.

Brightmetrics analytics, when seamlessly integrated with Mitel-powered systems, allow TCI clients to maximize the value of their data and investments.

Are you ready to apply agent performance metrics to re-energize your call center? Contact TCI at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 

7 Steps to Smarter Contact Center Coverage Scheduling

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Contact center managers are under a lot of pressure to deliver better results with fewer resources. Meanwhile, diminishing corporate budgets are forcing organizations to think of creative ways to compensate staff. These include pay-as-you-go arrangements in the form of zero-hour contracts, reduced and annualized working hours, and time off without pay.

How then can organizations achieve all-around contact center flexibility and cost savings in a way that satisfies staff, customers, and the business?

It comes down to leveraging the top 7 capabilities and benefits of today’s automated Workforce Management technology:

1. All-In-One, Easy-to-Use Solutions

The biggest barrier to embracing new technology is ease of use, or rather the lack of it. Fortunately, today’s fully automated solutions make light work of managing staff effectively – forecasting demand, creating schedules, developing accurate and insightful reports, and improving overall customer satisfaction. These automated tools make it easy and efficient to optimize workforce management.

2. Easy Access, Anytime, Anywhere

Agents can log in from home or on the go to check their schedules, see whom they are working with, and let their managers know when they are available. Managers and resource teams are able to build efficient schedules at any time and from anywhere for complete control of their call center scheduling operations.

3. Intelligent Resourcing

Using historical data, resource teams have the power to predict at the click of a button how many agents they will need, the skills they require, and who the right people are to fill those roles. They can even support a number of different shift patterns, including short shifts or split shifts, rather than employ a set number of people at set times of the day.

4. Flexible Planning On the Go

Key features provide much-needed flexibility. Real-time adherence monitors agent adherence to schedules. Automated alarms flag when schedules are in danger of being breached, and a real-time data feed – updated in seconds – enables fast decision-making.

Intra-day scheduling allows small changes during the day while considering unplanned agent absences and changes in customer demand. For example, managers can flexibly change break times and lunches or move people between skill groups, as well as front-office and back-office work. The changes may differ by only a few minutes, but those small changes can make the difference between meeting service levels during peak times and losing valuable calls.

5. Fit for the Future

The latest forecasting scheduling technology helps to right-size your contact center for the future. Running a series of “what if?” scenarios can predict staffing needs for regular seasonal fluctuations, upcoming marketing campaigns, and even the organization’s long-term business plan.

6. Self-Service

Self-service capabilities empower agents to trade shifts, voice their preferences for overtime shifts and request time off, increasing contact center flexibility and agent satisfaction. Plus, setting up auto-approvals means your staff doesn’t have to wait until the next day for an answer if management is not available.

7. Time and Cost Efficiencies

The automation provided by workforce optimization technology combines strategic planning with instant fine-tuning throughout the day to create a highly flexible contact center framework that keeps agents motivated, customers satisfied and CEOs happy.

Contact Center management continues to evolve. Ready to explore the latest innovations? Contact TCI experts today: (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.

 

Contact Centers 101… Understanding the Basics So Your Business Won’t Miss Out

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The contact center world of 2022 is filled with business opportunities and the chance to better meet your diversifying customer needs. Worried you might be missing out? Don’t be. Below, we formally open the doors to the contact center world and invite you to confidently step inside.

Why Does Your Organization Need Contact Center Technology?

If your organization handles and manages daily phone calls, then you can benefit from new contact center technology that can quickly and efficiently route calls, spot calling trends, and build an effective overall team.

Call center technology can accelerate reaching customer experience goals set by the managers and decision-makers of your organization – from increasing first call resolution to honing your tracking and reporting intelligence.

What Kind of Call Center Technology is Out There?

There’s a wide spectrum of call center solutions available to help maximize your business operations. The first step in determining which technology is ideally suited for your business is determining the size and classification of your contact center.

For example, are you a small business and just getting started exploring your options, or do you already run a small but “full-fledged” contact center? Are you an enterprise-class contact center? Establishing your requirements leads to the end goal – investing in the right technology to take you there.

Today’s call center solutions can cover all of the bases – from driving productivity to streamlining operations, to simplifying tool management, to call bursting for handling sporadic high call volumes. A sampling of customized contact center solutions available include…

  • Contact Center Enterprise provides a powerful toolbox of applications to transform dated, voice-only call centers into an omnichannel customer experience.
  • Cloud-based Contact Center services offer a multi-channel interaction center for the way customers communicate today. 4 Minute Video Demo: MiContact Center Business – Customer & Agent Experience
  • Boosting your team’s performance with Workforce Optimization applications and tools. Learn more
  • Proactively reach your customers and prospects with Outbound contacts to improve loyalty and uncover new revenue opportunities.

The contact center world isn’t so scary once you take that first step inside. Take the next step with TCI. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

The 9 Most Important Call Center Trends of 2022

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We’ve seen a lot of changes to the call center and customer experience landscape over the years, from cloud communications and virtual agents to more strategic thinking around analytics, more flexible social media interactions, and innovative ways to involve artificial intelligence. And when the pandemic pushed businesses to modernize their business communications overnight, we’ve seen even more shifts in how businesses meet the evolving needs of both customers and their employees.

Here are nine technology trends that are helping companies deliver the best quality customer experience. See how far your business has come in building customer relationships that last — or which of these trends may need to be on this year’s to-do list.

1. Artificial Intelligence

As early adopters continue honing AI applications for call routing, we expect to see more connections forged between various media channels and streamlined call center response.

2. Digital Transformation

A forward-looking digital transformation strategy is going to be essential for business competitiveness. And it’s not just about using the right channels to interact with customers where they are; the smartest businesses are integrating technologies to provide full customer context with each interaction and leveraging system data to provide proactive service.

3. Better Contact Center Analytics

Gone are the days of relying on supervisor skills and know-how to get the most out of contact center agents. Now, even smaller businesses are taking advantage of sophisticated analytics to turn data – like call and screen recordings, chats, SMS messages, and more – into useful feedback for their agents. We expect more advancements in analytics as companies continue to implement more unified communications platforms and strategies.

4. Omnichannel Communications

More businesses are recognizing that while a customer journey may begin on one channel, valuable insight and feedback from the customer can be gained on a completely different channel. Responsive businesses are using this trend to create a superb customer experience by unifying communications across channels into one stream. This helps their customers by connecting them with an agent who knows their purchase and service history and provides valuable context. Most importantly, the two-way conversation is public on a social media platform, so other customers can see how the business solved the problem.

5. Cloud Communications

Many businesses have already adopted cloud communications as part of their communications strategies, but cloud communications have become particularly important for contact centers. The steady increase in remote call agents has made cloud communications a necessity for businesses who want to take advantage of seamless team communications and collaboration. With cloud communications, traditional office-based contact centers can take on new locations, and grow and contract workforces as market needs demand.

6. Employee Engagement

Just as customer expectations have evolved in the last few years, so have the expectations of the employees that make quality customer experience possible. And dissatisfaction in the work environment and culture has led to high agent attrition in the contact center space and beyond. Businesses that want to remain competitive will provide their employees with the culture and technology that empowers an efficient, productive, and flexible workforce.

7. Flexible Working Options

Lower overhead, time zone flexibility, and variable working hours have made remote contact center workers a stable trend in 2022. With constantly improving unified communications, remote workers have become a permanent and beneficial part of the contact center environment. By using collaboration tools, contact center agents can be mobile, with access to real-time analytics and customer context.

8. AI-Powered Self-Service Tools

The high priority on process improvement and self-service since the pandemic has addressed the issue of increasing workload for contact center agents, as well as the difficulties around achieving the desired service levels or Average Speed of Answer (ASA). Giving customers information quickly helps reduce call volumes, and easy-to-navigate FAQs help narrow down calls to those with sufficiently complex issues. Quick access to self-serve solutions also provides an emotional benefit to customers (that DIY-fix high!) and reduces overall call times.

9. SMB’s Leveraging All Employees to Support Customers

SMBs are extending traditional contact center agent desktop features to employees that work outside of the contact center to supplement customer-facing employees. Blended UC/CC solutions that bring customer and employee experiences together into a single user experience tear down the silos between traditional contact center agents and the rest of the organization.

If you need more help determining how to apply these trends to your call center, TCI’s local experts are here to help. Contact us today: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Improving Customer Service… 8 Call Center Trends You Need to Watch

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When it comes to improving the Customer Experience with better technology, 2019 is shaping up to be the year of strategic thinking with focus areas like better analytics, more social media conversations and innovative ways to involve artificial intelligence.

To keep you informed and help you stay on target with your plans, we’ve identified the most influential strategic trends affecting call centers this year.

  • Artificial intelligence integrated into customer interactions – Businesses are getting deeper into predictive analytics, using artificial intelligence (AI) applications to help streamline call center experiences for customers and agents. Early adopters continue to hone AI applications for call routing, and more connections are being forged between various media channels to improve the customer experience.
  • Better contact center analytics – Gone are the days of relying on supervisor skill and know-how to get the most out of contact center agents. Now, even smaller businesses are taking advantage of sophisticated analytics to turn data – like call and screen recordings, chats, SMS messages and more – into truly useful feedback for their agents. More businesses are displaying statistical dashboards on user interfaces, so call agents and managers can get real-time updates on customer experiences.
  • Omni-channel communications for all – Omni-channel communications continues to separate proactive businesses from their more reactive counterparts. This holistic view of the customer experience is helping businesses give customers a more personal feel to resolutions. Unifying customer communications across channels enables businesses to resolve issues faster and helps sales agents identify better opportunities for future sales.
  • Widespread adoption of cloud communications in call centers – Cloud communications has become particularly important for contact centers. With the steady increase in remote call agents, cloud communications are a necessity for businesses that want to take advantage of seamless team communications and collaboration. With the cloud, traditional office-based contact centers can take on new locations, grow and contract workforces as market needs demand.
  • More robust customer satisfaction measurements – Businesses approach customer satisfaction measurement in different ways, but slick all-in-one measuring tools seem to be holding steady. No matter which measurements businesses are using, special care needs to be taken when addressing the customer experience across digital channels. Using effective reporting and analytics tools that are integrated with your communications systems makes this process automatic and valuable.
  • More remote call center agents – Lower overhead, time zone flexibility, and flexible working hours have made remote contact center workers a stable trend for 2019. With constantly improving and unified cloud communications, remote workers have become a permanent and beneficial part of the contact center environment. With collaboration tools, contact center agents can take their work mobile, with access to real-time analytics and customer context.
  • Continued emphasis on self-serve documentation – There is greater emphasis on self-service, problem-solving information on business websites. Giving customers information quickly helps reduce call volumes, and easy-to-navigate FAQs help narrow down calls to those with sufficiently complex issues. Quick access to self-serve solutions to problems also contributes to customer satisfaction and reduces overall call times.
  • Two-way social media conversations – The way businesses approach their social media conversations is changing. It’s not enough to make witty posts or share images. Customers are looking for a two-way social media conversation, and when they interact with businesses online, they expect a personalized and immediate response.

Ready to explore how these Contact Center trends can be applied in your business? Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

The 5 Most Important Contact & Call Center Trends

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We’ve seen a lot of changes to the call center and Customer Experience landscape in recent years. Cloud communications and a distributed workforce have been on the minds of many our clients. The need to integrate social media channels is becoming more important than ever.

Here are 5 of the strategic trends shaping up to influence businesses and their call center operations…

1. Digital transformation

Businesses are turning to truly digital contact centers that redefine the Customer Experience from start to finish. Seamless integration of technologies across the business provides full customer context with each interaction and leverages system data to provide proactive service.

2. Two-way social media conversations

When customers interact with a business online via social media, they expect a personalized and immediate response. More importantly, the two-way conversation is public, so other customers will be watching to see how the business addressed the problem.

3. Omni-channel communications

While a customer journey may begin on one channel, valuable insight and feedback may be taking place on a completely different channel. Unifying customer communications across channels gives businesses better context for their customers, helps resolve issues faster, and assists agents in identifying better opportunities for future sales.

4. Better contact center analytics

Sophisticated analytics turn data – like call and screen recordings, chats, SMS messages and more – into useful feedback for agents. Analytics programs are being used to build statistical dashboards so agents and managers can get real-time updates on customer experiences.

5. More remote call center agents

With constantly improving unified cloud communications, remote workers have become a permanent and beneficial part of the contact center environment. With collaboration tools, contact center agents can take their work mobile, with access to real-time analytics and customer context.

Need help figuring out how to apply these trends to your business? Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.