Being a call center manager is a hectic job because you have to make numerous numbers of decisions that impact your call center’s standard line. And flying by the seat of your pants is no more an option. You require call center metrics that evaluate what your agents are up to, how efficiently they’re doing their job, and how well they’re satisfying your clients. There is a great challenge about what metrics call centers should measure now, especially during pandemic like COVID-19 and the accompanying shift to work from home agents, staffing shortage, and persistent supply chain issues straining clients’ endurance.

Call centers acquire metrics at the agent and higher authority levels to measure the overall efficacy of agents regarding accomplishment, efficiency, and client satisfaction-related issues. Higher authorities keep their eye on performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge agent efficiency. Call center executives track strategic metrics and KPIs to make a business highly professional on behalf of their clients.

The list of KPIs is enormous, standard metrics include Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), First Call Resolution (FCR), Quality Assurance (QA), After Call Work (ACW), Service Level, and Occupancy. Though, metrics have changed with change of the work environment. Initially, call centers communicate with their clients by telephone to solve queries swiftly and at the lowest cost.

Clients used to dial a toll-free number and communicate with an agent to address their issue. Due to the phone-based communication system, clients could not contact concern person at their convenience.

Call centers assess client satisfaction based on how quickly an agent answered the phone and responded, irrespective of whether the issue was solved. This quick response left clients feeling unfulfilled.

Shifting to omnichannel contact centers, today's priority is on client experience. But operational metrics like Average Handle Time (AHT), Average Speed of Answer (ASA), and First Call Resolution (FCR) have proven to focus on managing costs instead of ensuring overall client satisfaction.

Incorporating messaging apps, emails and other digital channels into your client service enables you track more metrics than in the past. Chat and SMS are the new addition on the call center customer service segment. Most common includes are:

Average Resolution Time (ART) - The average time it takes for an agent to complete a conversation.

First Response Time (FRT) - It refers to how long a client wait for an agent to respond.

Texts per Conversation - It measures how many SMS texts are required to solve a client issue.

Chat to Conversion Rate - A lead-generation metric measures client service assistance that converts to sales.

Unsubscribe SMS Rate - Measuring SMS unsubscribes provides insight into customer satisfaction levels.

The switching of work pattern like work from home during COVID-19 pandemic doesn't reflect a significant change from metrics tracked in-center. The most notable difference lies in the outcome. Indicatively, are remote agents as fruitful as in-center according to their performance?

Undoubtedly agent satisfaction is one of the significant concerns of metric. Sometimes agents working from home may feel disconnected, leading to disappointment, resulting in a lack of desired outcome. For the same causes you calculate client satisfaction, you must consider agent contentment and get ways to keep them involved.

The satisfactory news is that proficiency among remote workers is generally on par, and in many segments, better than their in-center counterparts according to one study.

Another metric concern to watch is service. How do you know agents are working at house and not involved in something else? Consistency in performance is just as crucial with remote agents as in-center.

Progressive contact centers that are mostly focused on "First Contact Resolution" no longer depend on AHT. That doesn't mean we do not consider AHT at all. Unquestionably, it is an important forecasting tool. Moreover, you can draw a clear line between a shorter AHT and reduced client wait times. The drawback is that it can encourage agents to prioritize speed over quality. Indeed, clients want a instant resolution to their issues, but not at the cost of the agent rushing to get them off the line to take another call.

In general client satisfaction is a mission-critical metric irrespective of the industry. One way to measure client contentment is using surveys that contain OSAT-related questions, like “What was your overall contentment with experience?” inquiring them to implies their in general involvement on a scale of 1 to 10. Call center agents are the brand ambassadors and voice of the clients. They deal with growing complex problems, which make their work harder and tiresome. Providing standard training and supportive management alleviate their burden and make them feel more competent and less stressed. Agent’s satisfaction directly impacts on client’s satisfaction.

NPS has capability to predict potential areas that could help to grow business. When you see your company’s NPS is higher than average, then you know that you have a healthy relationship with clients who are likely to act properly for the brand, it fuels to word of mouth, and achieve a positive growth cycle. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure that used to calculate customer loyalty, satisfaction, and enthusiasm with a company that’s calculated by asking customers one question: On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely you are going to recommend this product to a friend or colleague? NPS scores assist businesses to ameliorate their work, client support, delivery, etc. for enhance client reliability. As a business metric, NPS helps organizations of all sizes organize around a mission-critical goal—enhance their score by gaining more enthusiastic clients—that are often easily tracked and quantified over time.

"Sentiment" is something that's hard to define. How will you appoint metrics to feelings? Satisfaction survey is one of the solutions.
Most of the BPOs have their own way to measure satisfaction of clients. These measures may be informally sent after quarterly or formally sent annually. It's crucial to acquire knowledge about what your clients feel about you, especially if your business represents the voice of the clients.
Another casual way to calculate client feeling about your business is the percentage of new businesses acquired by the business. If they don’t like you, the client probably won't provide new business to you.

As long as call center and BPO metrics in a post-COVID era are concerned, some parts have changed, and some parts remained the same. Standard metrics like FCR, CSAT, and Service Level will be always with us. Even AHT (Average Handle Time) remains fruitful.
What has changed is the shift from calls centers as a cost center fixated on getting clients off the phone as fast as possible to a determined client-centric focus where overall satisfaction is paramount, irrespective of the time it takes to solve an issue.

The following are standard call center metrics that organizations follow as a practice on monthly basis.

Attrition - The loss of vendor workforce, whether willingly, unwillingly, or due to internal promotions or transfers, and the company doesn’t hire a replacement.

Average Talk Time - The time an agent engaged themselves with a caller during a transaction.

Average Hold Time - The amount of time agents put their clients on hold

Average Abandon Rate - Total calls leaved divided by total calls offered.

Average Wrap-up Time - The time it takes to complete entire process of an inbound transaction. It often includes, providing data, filling out forms and making outbound calls.

Average Handle Time - The sum of Average Talk Time, Average Hold Time, and Average Wrap-up Time for a particular period.

Average Speed of Answer - The amount of time it takes to answer all the calls, divided by the number of calls.

Client Satisfaction - It refers to a measurement that determines how happy clients are with a company’s products, services, and capabilities. Client satisfaction details, surveys and ratings, can assist a company determine how to boost or changes its products and services.

Forecast - An approximate of the total number of client service calls and the client expects the dealers to handle on their behalf in the next month.

Line Adherence - The number of agents scheduled during a stipulated time of day to be on calls. It calculates the difference between the numbers of agents on calls and the number of agents planned to be on calls.

Service Level - The rate of calls replied inside a particular length of time that the client assigns as worthy.

Shrinkage - A workforce administration metric that alludes to when specialists are being paid but are not accessible to handle client intelligent. There's arranged shrinkage, such as taking operators off the floor for staff gatherings and preparing, and spontaneous shrinkage, such as specialist calling in wiped out or on get-away.