Contact center KPI’s are a widely discussed topic. Reason being, if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. The Key Performance Indicators help you measure the agents’ performance and therefore manage their actions. However, it is sometimes difficult to define, control and meet all KPI’s.
On one hand, the people think about the agent’s productivity, and KPI’s that measure quantity or volume, speed, time, service level, cost per contact, self-service rate and technology all come into play. The company’s aim is to meet customer’s needs at the lowest cost.
On the other hand, the customers need superior experiences with the contact center and these KPI’s come in handy to measure customer satisfaction levels. These metrics include first contact resolution, the speed of resolution, resolution rate, quality, level of service and self-service success, repeat business and many others. The customer needs fast, reliable and personalized services.
It is a delicate balance for the contact center. How can you merge customer experience and productivity to satisfy both parties?
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Align your Metrics Strategy
With the above explanation, you will notice some misalignment. If you place more effort on productivity, you compromise the customer experience, and when the focus is on measuring customer experience only, you affect productivity. You need to align your metrics strategy to your corporate objectives.
Your metrics strategy should bring together the two interests, and, therefore, include;
- How self-service is working across the various channels
- How agents handle customers across these multiple channels.
- How to reflect productivity (efficiency) and customer experience (effectiveness) and the cost implications as a balanced equation.
When your metrics plan is in alignment, you will develop tactics that balance productivity and customer experiences.
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Retain Traditional Performance Indicators
Traditional key performance indicators focus on the agent’s productivity. You should retain them as a baseline for evaluating agent’s performance. They are necessary for the contact center as you will monitor the output of your agents and can then create an effective workforce management plan.
As much as you are retaining the traditional KPI’s, you should take it up a notch by defining who is accountable for what, that is the leadership, the supervisors on the floor and the agents handling the interactions. Provide the necessary information for each user for them to assess where they are and whether they are meeting the desired goals.
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Introduce Customer Experience Indicators
Customer experience metrics focus on quality. They may be subjective because you pull the data from customer surveys – customers options may be biased depending on how their last interaction went. However, you should incorporate them into the main metrics strategy for a holistic approach.
Pull data from the various communication channels not forgetting the new self-service channel.
Important to note is that some metrics are specific to what they measure like service metrics focus on productivity. However, when you introduce metrics that focus on optimizing customer experience like efficiency metrics, the loop is complete. Keep working on the metrics until you find out which pairs meet your corporate objectives well. There is no “one size fits all.”
In summary, to bring the new contact center KPI to life, align your metrics strategy, retain the traditional KPI’s and introduce customer experience indicators. Look beyond the accessing and delivering reports for analysis to creating scorecards that extract data from multiple channels. The data will give precise information about the agent’s productivity and customer experience levels.
