Measuring the performance of a contact center entails examining the efficiency level of each agent as well as the efficiency level of the various departments to guarantee that your contact center is performing. Naturally, having your contact center be as productive as possible is in your best interests. The more effectively your employees operate, the more clients you will have and the more earnings you will make.

A well-functioning contact center may benefit both your customers and the agents themselves, in addition to improving your business income. After all, Customers appreciate organizations who go out of their way to deliver a positive customer experience. By providing an excellent customer experience to your clients, you will transform them into brand advocates, enhancing your operations and your organization as a whole.

Tracking the success of your contact center is also an excellent approach to get your agents more interested in providing an exceptional client experience. As a result, your agents are satisfied and driven, and your consumers are loyal to your firm. But this doesn’t come without its challenges and pet peeves. So, as a business owner, how do you tackle performance management within your contact center?

Metrics are objective indicators that allow you to compare and measure your performance. Useful call center statistics are quantitative and qualitative metrics that indicate how productive your agents are and whether the client experience they provide meets your initial expectations. In an ideal world, you should track the actions that have the most significant favorable influence on the client experience. Here are some of the most successful indicators for assessing your contact center effectiveness:

• The speed at which agents can address client concerns and complaints.
• The number of dropped calls, due to a shortage of agents available.
• Your agents’ average time in comparison to industry standards.
• Measuring at each step of the customer journey and point of contact the degree of satisfaction.
• The average amount of time consumers must wait before being connected to an employee who can assist them.
• The average rate at which your agents respond to phone calls.
• The number of calls processed during peak and off-peak hours.
• The average time it takes for an agent to return a call from a client who has attempted to reach you.
• The number of phone calls required to turn a prospect into a client.
• How frequently do clients call you with a similar issue?

The metrics listed below will vary based on the industry and contact type, but they are relatively prevalent in contact centers. They can have a substantial influence on the workload and hence your performance. Specifically:

• The pace of resolution: Customer repercussions or a lack of attention paid to a specific group of customers
• Calls are down: Inadequate technological tools for handling additional calls or a lack of self-service
• Call volume has increased: Changes in process, billing problems, or price changes for products or services
• While these are the fundamental causes, it might be beneficial to create a checklist to ensure no element is overlooked. Here are some instances to include in this checklist:
• Changes in practice or technique that will affect the length of the call
• Routing modifications (e.g., in the IVR or navigation menu)
• A shift in the items or services provided Marketing or sales assistance to clients or prospects.
• alterations in the client profile (a higher percentage of new customers can lead to an increase in average call duration)
• External economic or industrial influences
• Service outages, which may lead to lengthy complaints
• Waiting times are excessive (if you know you are going to be understaffed during a campaign)

How do you balance data analysis with business knowledge? As a business owner, you should devote at least one-third of your time to learning about your company. Work 40 hours per week on forecasting. You should spend around 13 of those hours exchanging information with other departments to understand how business changes will affect performance and how to incorporate them into future assessments.

This unwritten rule is subject to change. You will be able to account for company changes more simply and swiftly after collaboration is strongly established through regular check-ins. Furthermore, in businesses where data analysis is meticulous, you will have more time for qualitative examination of this business insight. The first step is to set aside time and create a list of subjects to cover so that you have the best opportunity of getting the knowledge you want. As a result, you will not only receive a more accurate prediction, but you will also strengthen your ties with other departments.

Crises bring out the best and worst in people – it’s up to you to pick what attitude you’ll adopt and the type of leader you’ll be. Christa Heibel, Founder, and CEO of CH Consulting discuss Crisis Leadership and Mindset in Business from our podcast series First Contact: Stories of the Call Center.

Contact center agents require access to their telephone tool and specific data, typically client data, regardless of where they are physically situated – on a traditional call center or at home, working from home.

CRM-telephony integration is critical so that all teams, no matter where they are working from the office or home, have access to the most up-to-date customer information and can utilize and update it without having to juggle interfaces continually.

Access to this vital data is naturally secure in your physical call centers. Unfortunately, this is not always true in remote work contexts. You may remedy the issue by adopting VPNs, which will allow your remote workers to access all of the data sources they require securely.

One more piece of advice: in these times of health uncertainty, ensure that all of your agents have a reliable internet connection if they are working at home. That is the first step for everyone to instantly switch to virtual configuration and use all of the voice telephony services capabilities, just as on your physical locations and with the same voice quality!

Quality training for your contact center agents is a must if you want to provide excellent customer support.

To satisfy client expectations, agents, whether in sales or customer service, must be regularly coached, supported, encouraged, and kept up to speed on the brand’s latest services or goods. They must also prepare for potentially dangerous scenarios. As a result, regular training sessions are required. Give your agents comments to help them perform better!

The most popular function that allows managers and supervisors to observe live telephone calls is call whispering. If necessary, they can act without the customer’s knowledge by providing advice or hints to the agent in conversation.

Most of the time, this option allows you to provide feedback to your consultants following the phone conversations and, if required, present them with the keys to better. Analyzing your consultants’ interactions with your customers helps you identify possible development areas, such as call scripts. Feedback, whether good or negative, is always helpful and aids in the development of your personnel.

According to research, one of the highest percentages of employees would stay with a firm if an investment in learning was made, and Bruce Belfiore, CEO and Senior Research Executive of Benchmark Portal, believes that call center training is crucial to success. However, efficient and precise remote training necessitates the use of the proper approach and tools. Listen to Bruce share his ideas on How to Train Call Center Agents Remotely Correctly and Efficiently.

When you pick a cloud solution, you avoid the issues associated with on-site deployment, dedicated servers (which would force you to enlarge your business at each of your locations to manage call volumes peak), and the expenses involved with managing these machines. You also make it easier for your teams to move to a remote environment. Furthermore, If you select a supplier who is a telecom operator and cloud contact center solution provider, you will simplify your life even more.

You will have a single point of contact who can offer you the numbers and contacts you need throughout the world, as well as assistance with your company’s needs. You will also see that inbound routing methods are critical to the success of any virtual contact center operation.

It would be best if you created these tactics based on your preferences, such as your agents’ abilities, the numbers contacted, the time slots, the agents available at the moment, the caller’s number, and so on. You should also be able to change your tactics with a few clicks, whether to add new agents to a specialized group or redirect a specific incoming flow to another team, site, or external partner.

The smart routing features of the telephonic system provide your agents with nearly limitless options. Not to mention the most vital feature: the ability to effortlessly and seamlessly switch between all of the customer’s chosen or preferred communication channels.

Customers nowadays are digital-first, and that is non-negotiable. They want to be informed, they like to be the first to hear about breaking news, and they value being present when significant events occur. They want brands to communicate in their language and through their preferred platforms. This may be either a tremendous difficulty or a fantastic opportunity!

Mike McGuire, Director of Contact Center Digital Transformation at NobelBiz, joins Craig Sell, Director of Association Development at PACE in this Community Insight videocast to discuss how to be where your clients are using technology and how to create an amazing seamless customer experience that will put your Contact Center business in the spotlight.

Call centers frequently employ two forms of technology to track and enhance performance: a cloud-based telephone system and software integrations.

A high-quality cloud telephony system has the following features:

• To develop a local presence, you can generate toll-free and international lines.
• Set up call routing and IVR to enhance your first call resolution rate.
• Queuing allows you to respond to all of your clients more quickly.
• The Click-to-Dial capabilities assist your agents in making more calls.
• Conversation recording and tagging make it simple to contextualize calls and shorten call time.
• To adapt your team composition to your business, you may use a virtual call center to build remote or geographically distributed teams.

One of the biggest challenges for contact centers in 2022 and beyond is knowing where to direct performance management. Agent performance must be assessed between objective measurements like your key performance indicators and more subjective ones such as the quality of customer experience and what kind of strategy you navigate. Remember, there is no such thing as a perfect approach. But the key here is knowledge. So always ask yourself, how well do you know your campaigns, technologies, metrics, and staff?

With more than 20 years of experience being a carrier and a contact center software provider, NobelBiz is the Promise Keepers of the industry, committed to offering the lowest cents per min rates, highest contact rates, anytime support, safety, and a seamless customer experience. We provide both CCaaS Solutions and voice services for all contact centers.

And with years of knowledge in the trenches of contact center solutions, we’ve designed a framework, process, and methodology for deploying Contact Center technology that delivers maximum ROI, customer experience, and workload, all while reducing your risks.