Contact Center Metrics
Multichannel Merchant did a good job of reporting on one of Tocky Lawrence’s NCOF presentations last week (“Developing and Applying Multichannel Contact Center Benchmarks”). The presentation concentrated on defining and describing actual metrics with some real numbers that the audience could use to gauge their call center operations: call abandon rates, service level, handle time, and call-to-order ratio/productivity.
According to Tocky, one difference in F. Curtis Barry & Company recommendations about call center benchmarking compared to many other consultants, is that “Other consultants recommend not benchmarking yourself against other companies. We say you should do that every so often, because it can raise a red flag that you might not spot if you are just measuring against yourself. It’s hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison, because everyone measures differently.” There is not necessarily a single right or wrong way to define a given metric, he says, but call center managers need to be aware of what they actually choose to measure before comparing their numbers to another company’s.
For instance, as Tocky points out, “You can measure the average speed of answer from when a call starts or from when an operator picks up. If you have an IVR, do you include that time in measuring speed of answer, or do you keep it separate time. The difference could be seconds to a minute more per call.”
Tocky Lawrence is vice president of F. Curtis Barry & Co., a multichannel operations consulting company focusing on the entire direct fulfillment process with expertise in call center consulting and benchmarking.