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Track the 5 most important call center metrics

Metrics are vital to the success of your call center. Without them, you risk missing customer trends that are
critical to your business. Metrics will help you understand whether you need to improve your support
processes and the costs involved in providing customer support.
This document shows how to align your metrics with key strategic goals,
such as reducing support costs and increasing customer satisfaction. It Abstract
describes the SMART approach, which applies to all metrics, followed by You’ve got your hands on the wheel, but the
a description of the five most important call center metrics. only way to get from 0 to 60 is to have your
eyes on the dashboard.

The SMART approach to meeting your objectives Visibility is as critical for your agents as it is for
management. Find out about the top 5 service
For all your metrics and business processes, follow this proven approach
metrics identified by your peers.
(think “SMART”):
By Greg Curgenven
 S – Track a specific part of the support process; for example, the
average number of activities it takes to close a case.

 M – Your metrics should be measurable across all teams, systems, or processes. That way you can
determine whether some processes take too long or some support teams aren’t as responsive as
necessary.

 A – Make all metrics available in real time. Use customized dashboards to get up-to-the-minute insight
into support data, so you can quickly identify trends and fix any issues.

 R – Relate your metrics to “day in the life” activities. Define your key metrics and track them in fields
(hint: make these fields required). Clearly communicate these metrics and their importance to your
organization. To increase buy-in and adoption, consider rewarding your top performers based on these
metrics.

 T – Compare performance across different time frames. Use trending reports to analyze your business to
determine whether service levels are staying consistent. By seeing changes over time, you can determine
whether process changes are having an impact on your support process.

Measure these 5 metrics


Support managers are always looking to increase customer satisfaction and reduce costs. As a result of
discussions with these managers, we compiled the following list of the 5 most commonly used call center
metrics. Keep in mind that as your use of Salesforce changes over time, your metrics may change as well.
1. Customer satisfaction
2. Cost per case
3. First call resolution
4. Individual agent performance
5. Agent productivity
Track the 5 most important call center metrics

Metric #1: Customer satisfaction index


Knowing where you stand on customer satisfaction is critical because if your customers aren’t happy,
they’re likely to go elsewhere. Customer satisfaction is related to how quickly and efficiently you resolve
support issues. Consider the following tools to help you measure customer satisfaction levels:

 Case Age in Business Hours – Use this free application —developed by Force.com Labs—to track how
long a case is open. You can even use this timer in this app to measure the duration of each status.

 Surveys – Survey your customers as part of the case closing process. You’ll find survey solutions that
integrate with Salesforce on the AppExchange.
Tip: Consider using workflow to automatically send out surveys to every 10th case that is closed.
 Social media – Let customers ask questions or provide feedback with tools such as Twitter and
Facebook. It’s important to stay on top of feedback and comments that customers post about your
company and follow up on negative comments immediately.
Metric #2: Cost per case
To know how much it really costs to support your customers, you must know your cost per case. Knowing
cost per case makes it possible to analyze ROI to determine whether additional support solutions makes
sense for reducing overall cost per case.
Tip: If cost per case is high, consider reducing customer interactions by diverting customer to self-help
solutions such as a link on your Website to public knowledge base. The free Service and Support
dashboards can show average amounts in hours for handling cases.
Metric #3: First call resolution
The more cases you can close with a single call, the lower your cost per case will be. Plus, your customers
will happier if a single interaction solves their problems.
Tip: Use the Case Status field to track cases that are closed on first call and use the solutions object to store
answers to common case questions.
Metric #4: Individual agent performance
By using dashboards, you can see trends and identify potential bottlenecks. Dashboards can also identify
top performers as well as agents who may need additional coaching. By watching increases in certain case
types, you can identify product issues or gaps from a documentation perspective. Also consider automating
the dashboard refresh to send the information via email to certain team members.

BEST PRACTICE 2
Track the 5 most important call center metrics

Metric #5: Agent productivity


By constantly tracking productivity you can quickly identify trends and intervene, if necessary. You can
also use dashboards to rank agents based on monthly metrics, such as case closure and first call resolution,
to create a little friendly competition. The free Service and Support dashboards show rep and agent
performance.

For More Information

Contact your account executive to learn


how we can help you accelerate your
CRM success.

BP_ServiceMetrics_2010-06-10

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