How to Monitor Call Center Performance

Editors Pick | 5 minute read

Imagine a month of perfect performance at a call center:

  • Agents take incoming phone calls like clockwork.
  • Customers feel satisfied and drive up net promoter scores.
  • Stakeholders are happy with your quarterly reports and ability to meet call center goals.
  • You have enough staff to handle peak call volumes every day.
  • Agent attrition is at an all-time low.

Sounds like a call center manager’s dream, right? You can come pretty close to this scenario—all you have to do is learn how to monitor your call center performance!

Which Elements of the Call Center Should You Monitor?

Agent performance & engagement

Agent performance measures how your contact center agents fare in their day-to-day work. When evaluating your agents’ performance, you might consider: 

  • Attendance and punctuality
  • Completion and maintenance of training
  • Teamwork
  • Initiative
  • Steady progress toward goals and KPIs

You can keep records of agent performance through monthly or quarterly evaluations. Tech tools like the Fonolo Portal can also tell you a bit more about their call quality—more on that later!

Agent engagement refers to how mentally connected your agents are to their work, their colleagues, and their organization. An engaged agent will show strong attendance, regular improvements and a willingness to grow with the company. On the other hand, an unengaged agent might take longer breaks or feel anxious about addressing phone calls. They also might not be receptive to feedback and may seem mentally “away.” Agent engagement is usually linked to strong performance, which means engagement is crucial to your agent’s success, and the success of your entire call center.

Bottom line? Both agent engagement and performance affect customer satisfaction.

Service delivery impacts customer satisfaction

Do you regularly have angry customers and low customer satisfaction scores? That’s one indicator of poor call center and agent performance. You can measure service delivery by monitoring phone calls for: 

  • Tone of voice
  • Script adherence
  • Amount of time needed for call resolutions

These indicators are usually strong predictors of an agent’s performance, but how do you measure service delivery from a whole call center? Customer satisfaction is a great place to start.

Speed and efficiency of delivery

Long hold times might point to an unengaged agent, but the problem is usually more complex than that and may be a symptom of a greater contact center issue. That’s why speed and delivery efficiency are strong performance indicators for your call center as a whole.

For example, low cSat scores aren’t usually an isolated symptom of poor agent performance. Your call center might have some efficiency issues around workforce management and training gaps that cause longer hold times, heightened abandon rates, and other indications of poor service.

Call center performance isn’t just about individual agents and metrics. Delivery speed, #customer satisfaction, and agent engagement all affect your outcomes. How do you measure #call center performance? Tell us in the comments! Click To Tweet

How to Monitor Call Center Performance: 5 Steps

1. Set goals & align them to KPIs

We all know how hectic the call center floor can be–revolving doors of new agents, constant training, challenging call volumes, and a steady flow of new tech are all part of an average day. Amidst the chaos, call center managers must give agents structured, measurable goals with clear benefits. Why?

Setting contact center goals helps

  • Improve call center agent engagement by allowing a sense of achievement
  • Unify stakeholders, agents, managers, and executives
  • Enable performance measuring

Goals should align with KPIs — first call resolution, average handle time (AHT), net promoter score, and customer satisfaction score are great examples.

So, you might have daily, monthly, or quarterly goals like these:

  • Improve FCR by 20% by the end of Q4.
  • Reduce negative social media comments by 10% by the end of the month.
  • Ensure agents score 80% or higher on tech training evaluations this week.

And if you don’t meet your goals? At least you can measure your performance using your progress toward those goals as a base.

2. Determine a budget and responsibilities

How many labor hours will you dedicate to meeting your call center goals? You’ll need to budget accordingly and account for raises, supervisor and agent salaries, and leadership responsibilities. One way to monitor performance is to see how aligned your goals are with your budget. Are your resources going to good use?

3. Set your performance review schedule

How will you schedule performance tracking? Will you report findings every week?

  • Every month?
  • Quarterly?
  • Yearly?

Schedule your follow-up meetings and make your performance tracking process transparent for your agents. You might also consider scheduling a timely stakeholder meeting every quarter to keep you on track and remind you to report on findings.

4. Use scorecards and other technology

Scorecards are a fabulous way to simplify both agent and call center performance measuring. They usually include both an agent self-assessment and scoring by the contact center manager.

TIP:

We have a fantastic agent scorecard template you can use to track call center and agent performance!

The gist? There are two sections—one for contact center metrics overall, and another for individual agent performance. Managers who want to learn how to measure call center performance must consistently assess agent performance against the center itself. But a two-pronged approach can’t hurt, either. In fact, adding tech to your performance measuring will speed up the process and ensure data accuracy. Once you start using Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs, you’ll be able to monitor your call-backs in real-time using the Fonolo Portal. You’ll get to access real-time analytics and valuable insights in rich reports. Which brings us to our next point:

5. Report on findings regularly

The best way to track call center performance is to report progress regularly. Our advice? Use tech to your advantage. Our software puts all your call quality data—metrics like call resolution time, hold times, and more—into rich reports to help you track call center performance and enhance your business strategy. You should also keep your agents in the loop on progress. Consider hanging a bulletin-sized snapshot documenting your overall call center performance every month or quarter. Of course, keep agent performance reports private, unless you’d like to recognize a successful agent!

Fonolo Resource cover image

The Executive Guide to Improving 6 Call Center Metrics

Measuring and improving call center metrics can be a pain point for executives. Download our free guide to help you improve 6 key call center metrics.

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The Executive Guide to Improving 6 Call Center Metrics

The executive guide to improving 6 call center metrics
Download Now
Fonolo Resource cover image

The Executive Guide to Improving 6 Call Center Metrics

Download Now

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