Every single day, your call center carries out hundreds of vital processes. Your people have to deal with time cards, training, handling customers, meetings, and more on a daily basis. So which of these activities have a tangible impact on your bottom line?

And how can you keep your call center on track to achieve its goals?

Call centers must have complete visibility into their departmental activities and resulting performance. This can only be ensured when they obtain and track key performance indicators (KPIs). 

While there's plenty of information online about the KPIs and metrics that every business should measure, the real challenge is to track the right call center KPIs.

So, how can you make it easier? Well, we can tell you. Here are 8 features that are guaranteed to improve your call center KPIs.

1. Call Routing 

First Call Resolution, or FCR as we like to call it, is quite an important metric to consider. What this means is: has your caller's issue been solved during their first call? Because, if a customer has to call several times with the same problem, they're probably not satisfied. And it won't be helping your reputation either. 

Imagine this: the same caller has had to call several agents and explain their issues to them all over again. This will result in them going off to your competitor and leaving negative reviews about you on review sites. 

Research from SQM Group shows that if a customer has to call a second time, the likelihood of them leaving for good rises from 3% to 38%! Yikes.

But, don't worry, where there's a feature, there is a way. And luckily, adding an IVR, call routing system, or both can help improve this considerably. So, try it out, and you will see the difference.

2. Call Queues

Nobody wants to wait for minutes on end for someone to attend their call. So, why are you expecting your customers to? First, calculate your average wait time or AWT by dividing the total number of answered calls by total call queue waiting time. Next, make sure it's kept at a minimum. 

Why is this important, though? Well, a study by ICMI showed how two-thirds of callers are willing to be put on hold for a maximum of two minutes. More than that, and it is a definite goodbye forever. 

The call queuing feature can help improve the waiting experience of callers till they get connected to an agent. This is because you can even personalize the experience for the caller, so they feel more at ease. 

3. Call Monitoring

So, scoring the quality of your agents' phone etiquette is entirely possible, which is why it's an important metric. Good phone etiquette equals happy customers, so call centers should score each agent's etiquette during calls.

This can be done by quality management or assurance teams listening in on calls through call monitoring capabilities. The factors that will be checked can vary according to specific requirements, but basic ones include: how nicely they are greeting customers and taking the time to understand the caller's issue. 

4. Interactive Voice Response

Of course, ensuring the efficiency of agents is vital to any call center. However, poorly distributed inbound calls are the biggest reason behind the slow and unproductive performance. This is where the Interactive Voice Response tool comes in. 

It is quite a handy tool, as it gathers caller information before they're connected with an agent. The agent receives the data in real-time, allowing them to act quickly. Thus, creating a detailed IVR menu will enable customers to receive a solution faster. As a result, agents can use this extra time to work on more complex issues. Win-win!

5. Call Recording

One thing that can significantly indicate whether the agents are performing as best as possible is continuously training them. If back in 2019, 59% of clients said that they expect customer support agents to be more competent than in 2018, think about how high their expectations might be now.

To ensure customer satisfaction, training your agents effectively is vital. But how can you do that? Well, the easiest way is through call recording features. If their calls are being recorded, managers can go through them with the agents to teach them the dos and don'ts, improving customer experience in the long run.

6. Voicemail

Convincing callers to hold on for a long time might help your abandonment rate, but certainly not your customer satisfaction rates. Sometimes, it's better to ensure that callers do leave the line before talking to an agent, as long as their reason for leaving is positive. 

We're trying to say that instead of testing the patience of your callers, give them the option to leave voicemails. It's a simple act of kindness that immediately improves customer experience, as they feel more in control. 

The silver lining to this not entirely ideal situation will be that this will help filter your call queue, so other callers will have to wait for less.

7. After Call Work

A KPI to measure agent productivity is Average Handling Time. This refers to the duration of a call from start to finish, on average. This includes transfers, after-call work, and hold times. 

The After Call Work feature can help significantly. It allows agents to quickly complete tasks such as setting tags, disposition codes, etc., before receiving the next call. This gives them all the information available the next time they get to handle the customer. 

8. Ring Groups

A simple way to ensure a better Average Speed of Answer (the average length of time agents take to answer calls) is through the Ring Groups feature. This allows you to group employees based on their skills and then choose between call cascading or simultaneous ring.

The call cascade method is when calls are sent from an extension to an external device, like a cell phone. The simultaneous ring method allows multiple devices to ring all at once. This allows you never to miss calls and improves the Average Speed of Answer metric. 

The Bottom Line

A call center is the foundation of most service-based businesses, so ensuring that everything is running smoothly is crucial. Call center productivity heavily relies on technology: measuring metrics, hiring people, implementing training, or improving work processes. 

A survey conducted by Salesforce concluded that 57% of customers believe that change is crucial and expect businesses to invest in the best customer experience tech available. 

So, the bottom line is: you need to introduce technologies that have features helpful in improving your KPIs. How you do it and what you think is important to monitor is entirely up to you.