Agent Metrics

About six months ago I had a meeting with a call center customer. The meeting was with the Customer Services Director and a consultant from a benchmarking company. The purpose of the meeting was to understand what metrics Spectrum should capture and display on the agents desktop wallboard.

The benchmarking consultant stated that the desktop wallboard should contain customer satisfaction ratings, AHT, service level, abandon calls as a percent, ASA and Calls Waiting (inqueue). The consultant said the agent will perform and meet the SLA's if they see these metrics on the desktop. First Call Resolution information is not available and could not be displayed.

From my point of view it did not matter to me what the customer wanted to capture and display, I just wanted a happy customer that is using our product. However, I was concerned about the amount of data to be displayed (because of desktop real estate) and the agent training that would be needed to explain the meaning of the metrics.

The customer decided to do a test. We had two types of desktop wallboards designed with different content and with agents of various skill levels. Later we found that more desktop designs were needed. The customer took a baseline measurement and then again four weeks later. The testing, set up and results are too much to cover in this blog but the final results are important to mention.

• New agents did best with a minimum amount of data: Calls in queue and oldest call waiting.
• Mid level agents performed best with four metrics: Calls in queue, ASA, Oldest call waiting and Service Level. Only a few of these agents wanted to see more and different metrics.
• Highly skilled agents improved most when they had performance metrics on their desktops. These metrics included: AHT, Occupancy, Abandon Rate, Service Level, and Calls Waiting. Some of these agents were actively asking for more data that would help them do a better job.

This customer is continuing to test the desktop content to find out what works best for their call center and agents. My takeaways from this test were:

1. Not all agents should see the same content - duh!

2. Give your agents the information that will allow them to perform best for their skill level.

3. As your agents improve, change the desktop content to match their skills.

4. Some agents want the tools to work for them. Listen to these agents and accommodate the changes when it makes sense.

This test was by no means perfect. There were flaws in the way things were set up, measured, and tested. But you cannot argue with the successes that this call center experienced.

Call Center New Year Resolutions

With the new year comes new year's resolutions. Every year some of us resolve to stop smoking, lose weight or be a better person. Sorry I cannot help you with the first two. If you manage a call center one way you can be a better person is to review and change your metrics, thresholds and reports.

Reviewing and changing your metrics, thresholds and reports will make you a better person because your agents and supervisors will love you for it! Call Centers are dynamic. Every year there is something new from the company that the call center must deal with. Everyone in the call center needs to adapt to these changes. Yet the agents and supervisors are still looking at the same metrics, responding to the same thresholds and seeing the same reports from last year.

If the call center has experienced any changes at all the reports, thresholds and metrics should change as well. In addition, agents that have finished another successful year probably have been promoted or at least are doing something more advanced. These agents should not be looking at the same old tired metrics and have the same threshold levels as last year.

Now is the time to review the status of your call center and make some changes that will make you boss of the year. Agents and supervisors will love you for updating their metrics and threshold settings because you have shown you are aware of what they are doing.

Status and Performance Reporting

When it comes to real time reporting for the call center there are two categories of report types: Status Reporting and Performance Reporting. At a glance these two types of reports look very similar, however, there are subtle differences. Knowing what these differences are and selecting the correct reports for your call center will make your reporting successful.

Status Reporting is for the call center that is mature, has agents that perform at a high level and need very little training and coaching. This call center knows what they are doing, knows their SLA's, the agents know their goals and regularly achieve them. This call center will have turnover that is lower than the industry average and have agents that adhere to their schedules.

Reports for real time status will include these KPI's:

• Calls in Queue
• Service Level
• Calls Abandoned
• Oldest Call Waiting
• Average Speed of Answer
• Average Handle Time

There are other KPI's that call center will include which will depend on the call center, the industry, the agent performance and other factors. The KPI's shown above are the critical metrics a call center that is performing at a high level should see.

Performance Reporting is for the call center that needs encouragement to reach their goals, has turnover that is higher than industry averages, does a lot of training and coaching and still misses their SLA's. This call center, large or small, seems to be on a roller coaster - some days the agents do very well other days not so well. This type of call center needs performance statistics that show how they are performing and what needs to be done.

Reports for real time perfomance will include these KPI's:

• Calls in Queue
• Oldest Call Waiting
• Average Speed of Answer
• Calls Abandoned Rate (Percent)
• Agent (Schedule) Adherence Rate
• Agents Available

These metrics help the agents with awareness which is typically lacking in an underperforming call center. To help the underperforming call center improve agent performance reporting is the best alternative.

Breaking down these reporting types further into more granular types there are Agent Status and Performance reports, Team Leader Status and Performance reports, and Call Center (Manager) Status and Performance reports. These reports become more targeted and granular and further help the call center improve.

For call center reporting to be successful and help the content in the report must be appropriate. providing the information can be de-motivating. To select the right type of reporting the manager must take a hard look at the call center and determine if they are a successful or an underperforming call center. Once the manager realizes what type of call center they have steps can be taken to offer the right information to the agents, team leaders, and manager.

Smart phones in the call center

Everywhere you look today you see smartphones. Call center managers, team leaders, agents, IT support, etc all have smart phones. Since so many people are using smart phones why not extend the use of the phone to the call center.

So what is a smart phone? If you have an IPhone or a Blackberry phone you have a smart phone. However, Wikipedia defines a smart phone as a phone with traditional phone features and advanced computing and connectivity.

Call centers leaders are now using their smart phones to stay in touch with the call center with web based reporting, scheduled reporting that provide current call center status and ad hoc alert message about metrics that are outside of the goals.

Managers are very mobile and the smart phone is an ideal tool to stay in touch with the call center in a very unobtrusive way.

Contact Center Statistics or Performance Metrics

There is a difference between statistics and performance metrics. Both are very helpful to the contact center but are used in two different ways. Confusing the two can be costly if you are purchasing a solution to improve the efficiency of your call center.

Statistics can provide a view of what is happening in the call center right now, for the interval or for the day. These statistics are helpful when the agents, team leaders and managers want to know the current status of the call center. Good statistics that show the status of the call center are:
Average Handle Time (AHT) or Average Call Handle Time (ACHT)
Service Level (SL%)
Abandon Rate (ABN%)
Average Speed Answer (ASA)
Longest Wait Time (LWT)
Calls in Queue (CIQ)
ACD Time (ACDT)
There are many more statistics that are available and each Call Center manager needs to determine what is best for their call center. These statistics and more are available from your ACD.

Performance metrics provide a different picture of the contact center. While statistics show us what is going on for our call center from our point of view performance metrics will show you what your customers think of your agents and call center. The team leader or call center manager may be aware of the call center status (statistics) but not aware of what the customers think of the call center or how well we are doing compared to our goals (performance metrics).

Performance metrics can provide a view of what our customers think of our call center and how we are doing compared to our goals. For example a recent study showed that agents thought their customer satisfaction rate was above 80% while the customer gave a satisfaction rating of just above 60%. Some performance statistics that are useful to the call center manager are:
First Call Resolution (FCR%)
Customer Satisfaction (CSat%)
Agent Utilization Rate (AUR%)
Cost per Contact (CoC)
Average Speed Answer (ASA)
Abandonment Rate (ABN%)

These metrics will provide a true picture of performance in the call center, identify strengths and weaknesses, and help establish goals for the call center and agents. Used properly these same metrics can be used in a scorecard (A single weighted number that shows how well the call center is performing, today)

Each contact center needs to select the metrics and statistics that are appropriate based on the businesses industry. However, it is not unusual for a single contact center to have different metrics for different groups.


So to truly improve the efficiency of the contact Performance Metrics are the better option. These metrics provide a view of the contact center from the customers point of view and give the manager an image of what needs to be worked on to improve the contact center productivity and efficiency.