Call Center Metrics: Inbound Call Center Metrics

A loyal customer base is a dream of any business across any industry. Businesses are working hard to sustain or increase their customer base every day. When it comes to loyalty, 96% of customers say customer service plays a vital role. To make their customers’ journey more flexible and better, businesses are building personalized communication solutions.

Another source says 68% of customers think that service representative is one of the keys to a positive service experience. By monitoring the performance of the support team, a business can maintain the level of service experience it is delivering. However, if you try to make so many measurement sheets, at one point it will become hard for you to keep track of all the sheets. So to help you out, we came up with metrics that can ease this monitoring for you. You can call it Call Center Metrics.

What is Call Center Metrics?

A call center metrics is a bunch of parameters that a business uses to track and measure the performance of its agents and call center. There are different levels on which one can measure performance, like agent level, team level, and company level. But the question that arises here is, what are the key points that one needs to consider. Well, these key points are called KPIs, Key Performance Indicators. These are used by managers to track the performance of their agents. There are some common KPIs that include First Call Response, Average Customer waiting time, and abandon rate.

In this article, we are going to cover Inbound Call Center Metrics first. In order to maintain the performance, you should keep track of these on a regular basis.

Inbound Call Center Metrics:

KPIs of Inbound Call Center Metrics:

Average Customer Waiting Time or First Response Time (FRT): (Total customer waiting time)/ (total number of inquiries)

First Call Resolution (FCR): (Total Calls resolved in the first attempt)/ (Total number of first calls)

Average Call Abandonment Rate: [(Number of calls placed - Numbers of calls handled)/ (Numbers of Calls Placed)]*100

Average Handle Time: (Total talk Time + Total Hold Time + Total Wrap Time)/ Numbers of Call Handled

Repeat Call Rate: Numbers of Repeated Calls/ Total Numbers of Calls

Call Center Occupancy Rate: Handle Time (Talk Time + After Call Work TIme)/ Time Signed into Queue

Call Arrival Rate: Number of calls received at a specific time of the day, day of the week, etc.

Hard to understand, right? Ok, let’s learn about them one by one.

Average Customer Waiting Time or First Response Time (FRT):

Formula = (Total customer waiting time)/ (total number of inquiries)

It is the average time that a customer spends waiting before connecting to an agent. As a business, you may already know that a waiting customer is a leaving customer. You can not let them wait for a very long period of time. If this average time starts to increase, the number of customers dropping calls will increase too. This will end us making your service experience look bad. To maintain or reduce the waiting time, a business can follow up these things:

• You can try be telling your customers about the average wait time. If that passes, tell them to use alternate methods to reach the support team.
• Use IVR service to keep your customers engaged. Setup waiting music, latest offers, common questions, and more.

These two methods will help you sustain or reduce your average customer waiting time.

First Call Resolution (FCR):

Formula = (Total Calls resolved in the first attempt)/ (Total number of first calls)

When a customer calls, they always hope that their problems get resolved in the first call. If a support team manages to keep this number rising, customers will praise your brand for delivering such good service.

When customer issues get resolved in the first attempt, it improved the metrics in two ways. First, it reduced the number of repeat calls, and second, it results in higher customer satisfaction.

The formula mentioned above is one way to measure FCR. Another method to calculate is:

FCR = (Total number of calls resolved in the first attempt)/ (total number of first calls)

Average Call Abandonment Rate:

Formula = [(Number of calls placed - Numbers of calls handled)/ (Numbers of Calls Placed)]*100

In FRT, we learned about we can’t let our customers wait for long. If we do, a customer will abandon the call, and we will come here. To understand the formula, let’s suppose you received 10 calls in a day. 2 calls get abandoned by the customers.

So, the number of calls placed is 10, and the number of calls handled is 8. This leads us to 2 abandoned calls. This gives us an average rate of 20%.

To be more accurate, try to avoid calls that were dropped before 10 seconds. It might be a wrong number or they are not sure about calling you. Silly introverts.

Average Handle Time:

Formula = (Total talk Time + Total Hold Time + Total Wrap Time)/ Numbers of Call Handled

Here we are talking about the whole time taken to resolve the customers’ issues. That means we are counting hold time, transfer time, and time spent talking to the agent. So to calculate, follow this:

As a smart business, you might be using cloud-based telephony. If yes, agents do not need to access customer’s data at all. All you need is a smart system that will collect data for you. To measure, you can use the formula mentioned earlier.

Repeat Call Rate:

Formula = Numbers of Repeated Calls/ Total Numbers of Calls

As a saying goes, no one is perfect and that same goes for your support team. Not all issues can be solved in the first call. So the calls that were not solved in the first attempt fall in this category.

If you keep a track of what type of these calls are, you might find some patterns. Like what type of issues are taking long. What type of issues are ending at the first attempt. By understanding these patterns, one can improve the performance of its team.

Call Center Occupancy Rate:

Formula = Handle Time (Talk Time + After Call Work TIme)/ Time Signed into Queue

Here occupancy is about busy agents and not the headcounts. It is very simple to understand, If an agent is utilizing 85% of its time to take calls and resolve them, the occupancy rate of that agent is 85%. There are 3 reasons possible if you are noticing a low occupancy rate:

• Not enough calls being received. (This can be the result of many different things.)
• Overstaffing. (Call to agent ratio must be maintained)
• Call Distribution. (Use cloud-powered AI unified systems to avoid poor distribution of calls)

Call Arrival Rate:

Formula = Number of calls received at a specific time of the day, day of the week, etc.

Call arrival rate will help you understand the activity hour of your customers. Read the pattern about what type of calls you are receiving at what hours. Understanding this pattern will help you clear three things:

• Schedule staff shifts
• Strength of call center at specific times
• Plans for the future.