Call center productivity is more important than ever before. According to ICMI, the average customer service call center tracks more than 25 metrics (read the full story here). But in this world, "the more the merrier" is not an effective strategy. Doing so is disorienting and can mark the death of the five critical KPIs that matter:
1. Cost per Call (Contact)
2. Customer Satisfaction
3. First Contact Resolution Rate
4. Agent Utilization
5. Aggregate Call Center Performance
Interestingly enough, call centers that integrate telephony systems with customer data systems see an immediate and positive impact on these KPIs. When systems don't work together, agents are tasked to manually finesse, and in some cases, brute-force the processes that can and should be automated.
Removing technology barriers through integration makes agents more productive and delivers a measurable and positive impact on important KPIs.
- Call times increase when agents are forced to search multiple systems to find and present customers with answers to their questions. Consolidation and integration of data and telephony gets agents to the answers faster, lowering call times and cost.
- Offering self-service options (often preferred by customers) improves the rate of first contact resolution and elevates customer satisfaction levels.
- Agent utilization improves dramatically given that self-service is working and agents are handling more contacts per day.
- All in all, you will deliver a more balanced scorecard across all performance matrices.
So you can see, integrating contact channels with customer data and knowledge can be a game changer in keeping critical KPIs alive and well.
Have you integrated your telephony and customer data systems? What impact have you seen on your critical KPIs?
