Customers have high expectations of your contact centre. They expect smooth and professional experiences with customer support agents. Above all, they want their questions to be answered quickly. However, achieving successful and timely results is often easier said than done.
Contact centre performance management helps you outline a clear strategy. But what exactly is this tactic, and how can it help you get the results you desire? We’ll explore all that and more below.
What is Contact Centre Performance Management?
Contact centre performance management is designed to improve the performance of contact centres and boost customer satisfaction. It involves monitoring and optimizing key aspects of your centre, including internal processes, agent performance and customer satisfaction.
Successful performance management is built around a set of relevant metrics. These will be used as benchmarks as you progress your optimisation strategy. You’ll be able to answer questions such as ‘Is a certain strategy working?’ and ‘Has efficiency improved within a given period?
While monitoring and calculating metrics manually is possible, most modern businesses prefer performance management software. The right solution brings instant visibility and reporting. These tools come with centralised dashboards, giving quick access to the information you need. This can help deliver quicker and better decision-making.
Why is Contact Centre Performance Management Important?
Contact centre performance management helps you spot inefficiencies in your operation. Addressing these issues can bring significant advantages to your organisation. These include:
i. Greater Customer Satisfaction
Ultimately, the end goal of performance management is to create happier customers. By focusing on areas such as first-call resolution, you can elevate customer experiences. Callers receive accurate and swift answers to their problems.
ii. Boost Employee Retention
Staff are more comfortable in their roles with a clear career path. Performance management helps you keep a closer eye on individual employees. You can identify strengths and weaknesses, and earmark areas for development.
iii. Improve Operational Efficiency
Small errors can quickly cause significant problems for contact centres. Performance management provides you with a ‘birds-eye-view’ over your operations. You can spot inefficiencies and bottlenecks hindering overall progress.
iv. More Informed Decision-making
Contact centre performance management means that all optimisations are underpinned by data. You’ll make more informed decisions and are more likely to receive successful results.
Top Tips for Successful Performance Management
There’s no denying that contact centre performance management comes with a long list of benefits. But how can you ensure a successful strategy? Listed below are some top tips to get you started.
i. Set goals for improvement
The process of performance management should begin with introspection. You won’t be able to optimise everything. Which areas of your contact centre will benefit from improvement?
Data should be central to this process. Gather information from across your operation and look for weaknesses. For example, perhaps customers are waiting in long queues before seeing an agent. You need a set of goals for correcting these issues.
When setting goals, it’s useful to follow the ‘SMART’ framework. This means that goals should be:
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- Specific – Your goal should be clear and answer your key questions.
- Measurable – We’ll discuss this in the next section.
- Achievable – Your objective should be realistic and within your organisation’s budget and other resources.
- Relevant – A goal should fit within your organisation’s wider objectives.
- Time-bound – It’s important to set a time frame for completing a certain goal.
ii. Choose a Set of Metrics that Align with your Goals
As mentioned, all goals should be ‘measurable’. This means that they must align with a clear set of metrics.
Below, we’ve listed examples of three metrics that can be useful for call centre performance management.
First call resolution (FCR)
The percentage of calls that are resolved in the first interaction. Customers don’t like being passed from agent to agent, so achieving a high first-call resolution is always desirable.
FCR is measured through the following calculation:
The number of customer queries resolved in the first call/total engagements X 100
Customer effort score (CES)
Measures how easily customers can reach a customer support agent. This metric can be calculated by sending a survey to your customers.
You might ask a question such as ‘How easily did you reach the right agent for your query?’ Customers would then provide a response ranging from ‘very easy’ to ‘very difficult’. FDR can be calculated by gathering all responses and dividing the number of positive responses by all responses.
Cost Per Call (CPC)
The average cost of each call. Organisations that allocate resources effectively will have a lower CPC.
CPC is measured through the following calculation:
Total cost of calls/Total number of calls.
iii. Collect and Analyse Data
Successful performance management is built around data. You’ll need to collect as much information as possible as you carry out your optimisations.
Luckily, there’s no shortage of ways you can collect data. Call recordings, agent statistics, and other records all provide useful insights. All this information can be plugged into your analytics tool for additional insights. These can be used for benchmarking to gauge the effectiveness of your strategy.
Ultimately, the more data you collect, the easier it will be to accurately monitor your progress.
iv. Gather Customer Feedback
As well as gathering data internally, it’s also important to speak to customers as you plan your optimisations. Having a ‘finger on the pulse’ demonstrates that you value customer opinions.
Speak to your audience directly about their experiences interacting with your contact centre. What issues did they encounter? What would they like to see done differently? Audience surveys can be an effective way of gathering this information.
It’s important that customers know not only that their voice is heard, but also acted upon. Put audience feedback at the heart of your performance management strategy.
v. Focus on Continuous Improvement
Performance management is all about finding new ways to enhance your contact centre. But this isn’t a one-person job – your team will need to embrace a new mindset. The easiest way to achieve this is to introduce a culture of continuous improvement. In other words, everyone, from junior to senior members of staff, should be invested in self-improvement.
Your team may require a little encouragement to achieve this mentality. Create space on your LMS for employees to learn and grow their skills. Engaging resources are always more likely to interest your team. Opt for quizzes and infographics rather than lengthy case studies.
When members of staff take the time to learn, make sure to recognise their efforts. You might introduce an employee of the month scheme or offer vouchers to employees who complete certain courses.
vi. Recognise Top Performers
Hanging onto your top talent is essential for maintaining high levels of performance. But how can you prevent staff from being tempted by positions elsewhere? As the expression says ‘a little recognition goes a long way’. Make sure that staff feel valued for their hard work.
Recognition can take many different forms. It could be as simple as publicly recognising hard workers in front of your teams.
To send a clear message though, always try to protise internal promotions. Nearly three in ten (28.3%) workers leave jobs because they see few opportunities for growth or advancement. Internal promotion demonstrates a path to career progression for those who contribute positively to your organisation.
vii. Evaluate and Adjust Your Approach
Contact centre performance management is an ongoing process. It’s important to regularly evaluate your strategies. What’s working? What could be done differently next time? Asking these questions will help you to consciously refine your approach.
Remember, the work shouldn’t stop when you achieve your goals. Reassess your call centre performance. Priorities will change over time. Adapt your strategy to address new challenges.
Challenges of Contact Centre Performance Management
We’ve provided you with tips to get you started with your performance management strategy. When planning, though, it’s important to recognise certain hurdles that may hinder your progress.
Listed below are some common challenges that you’ll need to consider:
- Choosing the right metrics – There are many contact centre metrics to choose from. It’s easy to make the wrong choice and get an inaccurate picture of your progress. To avoid this situation, choose your metrics carefully. Always bear your objectives in mind.
- Data collection – Contact centre performance management requires many forms of data. Collecting and maintaining this information can be challenging. To ensure high-quality data, avoid collecting the same information from different tools. Instead, opt for a single source of truth.
- Agent uncertainty – Agents are used to working in a certain way. It’s not uncommon to encounter some friction when you introduce new tools. To keep everyone on the same page, sell the benefits before introducing software. Allow employees to try tools for themselves and experience advantages first-hand.
Final Words
Your contact centre is an essential part of your business, providing a clear link between you and your customers. When customers get in touch, it’s key that they go away with a positive impression. For that, you need a contact centre that operates at the top of its game.
Contact centre performance management provides a clear route for contact centre success. Here, we’ve explored some top tips to get you on the right path. Try these one by one and in a few simple steps, you can elevate your contact centre. So, why not get started?