CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service)

30+ Contact Center Metrics to Measure Your Business Success

To grow sustainably, businesses must understand the parameters that affect their growth. Contact center metrics and key performance indicators are these parameters – the reflection of how a business has made its customers happy.

While earlier businesses didn’t focus much on delivering value to customers through their call centers, the trends today have changed. According to a report by 8×8, employee satisfaction and customer experience are now considered the top KPIs to track by contact centers.

There are over 30 contact center KPI benchmarks that your business can track to achieve higher performance.

30+ KPIs for Contact Centers

You can get a good idea of how well your contact center is working through the following contact center metrics that cover everything from operations, performance, and inception to customer experience.

Let’s dive straight into the 30+ best contact center metrics industry standards.

Operation KPIs

The contact center key performance indicators that let you track how efficiently your facility functions are discussed below.

1. Repeat Call Rate

Repeat call rate is a metric that hints at the number of calls that could not be resolved in the first interaction. This helps identify complex issues that need repeat calls.

You can calculate this by dividing the number of calls related to an issue by the total number of calls.

2. Percentage of Calls Blocked

The percentage of blocked calls is bad news for your business – this metric refers to the number of customers who tried to connect with your agents but received a busy tone.

You can calculate this metric by dividing the number of calls that do not reach agents by the total number of incoming calls. You want this metric to be as low as possible.

3. Calls Handled

The calls handled metric lets you see how many calls your call agents handled in a predetermined timeframe.

It can be categorized into two parts – calls handled by agents and calls handled by IVR or other automated systems.

4. Cost per Call (CPC)

Handling calls require the use of resources, which incur costs. Cost per call, therefore, lets you know how much each call costs you.

This can be calculated by dividing the total cost of all calls by the total number of calls.

5. Call Arrival Rate

It is a type of call volume metric that tells a business how many calls are being received by all agents within a set period of time.

The call arrival rate can help plan resources more effectively by identifying the most beneficial trends.

6. Peak-Hour Traffic

You can leverage your contact center software to measure the peak hours each month or season to determine how many agents you require on duty.

Peak-hour traffic helps with resource optimization.

7. Average Age of Query

The average age of query is a metric directly related to how well an agent resolves a query. It is the duration for which an unresolved ticket stays open. You can calculate this by dividing the total time of open queries by the total number of queries.

8. Callback Messaging

Callback messaging is a smart way to avoid putting your customers in a queue. Using this option, you can arrange callbacks for customers if they wish.

It is a metric that lets you optimize staffing and call availability.

Inception KPIs

It is a fact that customers form an opinion about your business even before any interaction with your call agents takes place.

The metrics below help you understand that opinion.

9. Average Hold Time

The average hold time is the duration for which your customers were waiting in a queue for their queries to be resolved. It can be obtained by adding up all the wait times of every caller and dividing this number by the total number of calls.

You want this metric to be as low as possible.

10. Call Abandonment Rate

The call abandonment rate is the rate at which your customers drop out of the call waiting queue and abandon the service call. It can be obtained by dividing the difference between incoming calls and handled calls by the total calls received.

If the call abandonment rate at your business is high, it means your contact center may be inefficient at resolving queries.

11. Service Level Rate

Each contact center has a standard service level that determines the ideal time within which each call must be resolved. The number of calls that get resolved at the service level is the service level rate of your call center. You need to divide the number of calls answered within the service level by the total number of calls offered to arrive at the metric.

12. Average First Response Time

Average first response time is extremely important because it shows how quickly you are getting to your customers with a ticket.

This metric can be calculated by dividing the first response times by the total number of calls.

This metric needs to be as high as possible to ensure customer satisfaction.

Agent Performance KPIs

Your contact center is comprised of agents as its most important aspect. The performance, too, would be impacted by how well they perform. Use the metrics below to measure how well your agents are working.

13. Active Waiting Calls

Customers do not like to be kept waiting. You can track the number of active waiting calls by dividing the number of calls on hold at any given time by the total number of calls.

This metric helps you understand how well your customer support team manages the incoming call volume.

14. Agent Effort Score

To provide the best support to customers, agents need to know how to navigate the systems and find relevant information. Agent effort score is a metric that measures the ease with which information is available to agents to help customers.

This can be calculated through an agent survey that lets them score how easy it is for them to support the customers.

The total score can then be divided by the number of respondents to get the AES.

15. Average Speed of Answer

Average speed of answer is the metric that allows you to understand how long your agents are taking to answer inbound calls. It can be calculated by dividing the total customer waiting time by the total number of calls that your agents answered.

Agents should answer as many calls as possible within service level times.

16. Average Talk Time

As is evident, average talk time refers to the total time an agent spends on a call with a customer. This doesn’t include the time spent putting a customer on hold.

This time can be calculated by dividing the time spent talking to a customer by the total calls handled by an agent.

17. Wrap-Up Time

After hanging up with a customer, the call agents must ensure that everything they request is carried out. This includes escalations, sharing resources, follow-up emails, etc.

The time spent doing this is called Wrap Up time. It can be calculated by dividing the difference between total handle time and total hold + talk time by the total number of calls.

18. Missed and Declined Calls

There are instances where agents need to decline some calls or end up missing calls. The total number of such instances can automatically be tracked using contact center software like JustCall.

Keeping this number as low as possible is essential to ensure high customer satisfaction.

19.Total Resolution Time

Total resolution time is the metric that tells you how efficient your call agents are at solving customer queries. It is average time an agent takes to resolve an issue.

It can be calculated by dividing the total resolutions served by the total number of tickets solved.

20. Transfer Rate

Transfer rate refers to the number of times a customer is redirected to another department or agent for resolution. A high transfer rate means that your customers may be reaching the wrong department at first contact.

You can obtain this metric by dividing the total transferred calls by the total calls handled.

21. Agent Utilization Rate

Agent utilization rate is a measure of agent productivity in terms of the time they spend on calls out of the total working hours they clock.

You can obtain this metric by multiplying the average number of calls handled by the average time of calls handled and dividing this figure by the working hours.

22. Adherence to Schedule

Adherence to a schedule helps you understand how much time your agents spend idling. This can be calculated by dividing the sum of call handling time and net available time by the number of paid hours.

It can help you optimize the manpower at your contact center drastically.

23. Calls Answered per Hour

Calls handled per hour is a metric you can track to measure how many resolutions your agents deliver in an hour. However, it has a downside: to increase this metric, your agents may not deliver the right level of service and hang up sooner.

Track this metric for populating a bigger picture rather than determining goals.

24. Average Handle Time (AHT)

The average amount of total time your call agents spend on a single call can be defined as the average handle time. It is tricky to get this metric in the right range because lesser handle times may compromise quality, and higher values may signify other problems within the system.

You can calculate this metric by adding the talk time, hold time, and wrap-up time and dividing the sum by the total number of calls.

25. Call Availability

Call availability signifies the time duration for which your agents are available and ready to receive calls.

It gives the managers or supervisors insight into how a call agent manages his time by looking at the number of calls they handle each day and the call availability.

26. Types of Calls Handled

Types of calls handled give your business information about the most common type of query your agents are handling. This helps you introduce relevant self-service for customers. It also helps with improved resource allocation.

Types of calls include order tracking, customer support, claims, refunds, complaints, change requests, etc.

Experience KPIs

These are the specific KPIs for contact centers that let you measure how happy your customers are.

27. CSAT

The CSAT score, or Customer Satisfaction Score, is a measure of satisfaction your callers feel with the responses and service the contact center agents give them.

To generate the CSAT score, conduct a customer survey and ask them to rate the service. Gather the total number of positive responses and divide this number by the total participation. You will get the CSAT score by multiplying this figure by 100.

28. Quality Assurance(QA)

Quality Assurance score (QA score) measures the service quality of every agent against the company benchmarks. This is a subjective score that the contact center supervisor gives to every agent. The supervisor listens to a customer call as the agent speaks to them and rates the agent on the scorecard.

29. Net Promoter Score

“How likely are you to recommend our services to a friend?” This is the question that businesses ask their customers from time to time.

The score they receive is then used to calculate the Net Promoter Score, which tells the business how many loyal customers they have. It also helps them initiate customer advocacy programs.

30. Customer Effort Score

Customer Effort Score or CES tells you how easy or difficult your customer service system is to navigate.

You can get this score by initiating a survey asking customers how easily they resolved their queries. You can then divide the positive responses by the total number of responses to get your CES.

31. First Contact Resolution

First contact resolution is an important metric because it tells you how many tickets your agents resolve in a single call.

To get your FCR percentage, you can simply keep a count of the total number of calls that were resolved in a single run and compare them with the volume of calls you get.

Wrapping Up

Whether your business is a start-up, small, medium-sized, or even a full-fledged enterprise, investing in creating a good contact center will help you grow. Tracking contact center performance metrics is key to growth that can be sustained and improved.

The key to effective monitoring and strategical readjustment of your facility lies in selecting the right software, like JustCall. Such platforms provide comprehensive toolsets and monitoring, tracking, analytical, and reporting features that enable you to draw a holistic picture of contact center performance.

To know how JustCall can help make your contact center KPIs better, visit the website.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the four types of metrics?

The four distinct types of call center metrics are:

  • Customer experience metrics
  • Contact center operation metrics
  • Inception metrics
  • And contact center performance metrics

Under these four categories, most of the contact center metrics can be categorized. Customer experience and contact center performance metrics are the most important metrics to track.

What is the most important KPI at a call center?

The most important metric that your contact center can track is the first contact resolution metric. This figure tells you how many customers queries your agents resolved in a single call.

Resolution of a query in a single call is what most contact centers strive to achieve because it essentially means that the information provided to the caller was sufficient in one interaction.

How can I measure call center performance?

Measuring the performance of your call center eventually comes down to measuring the productivity of your agents. You can track the following metrics to ensure that your contact center is performing well:

  • Average handle time
  • Average time after call
  • Agent occupancy
  • Dial transfer rate
  • Agent unavailable time
  • And schedule adherence
What are the most commonly used KPIs at call centers?

There are many contact center key performance indicators. However, businesses commonly track these top five for a quick overview of how things are running:

This gives the business an idea of how many calls were taken, the average time on each call, and the most successful calls.

Which software to use for KPI measurement at the call center?

Today you can choose from various contact center software to help you measure all the important contact center metrics and KPIs. Some of the best ones are:

JustCall
RingCentral
Contacto

JustCall gives you an edge over other software with its all-bases-covered toolkit for metrics measurement and analytics.

Vijaya heads the Global Support team at JustCall, where he has played a pivotal role in expanding the support team and diversifying its channels and services. Under his guidance, the team consistently earns top customer satisfaction scores. With a passion for team-building, Vijaya is committed to empowering his staff to deliver unparalleled customer experiences. In addition to his managerial responsibilities, he is a certified Leadership Coach, specializing in helping leaders overcome their unique challenges to achieve success.

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