Is There Room To Take Benchmarking Metrics In A Call Center Outside Of Operational KPI's?

Benchmarking in a call center is something that is traditionally viewed as client driven, for example 80/30 (80 percent of the calls answered in 30 seconds) service levels are recommended or in some cases expected with very little discussion on the important question Why?   Should we assume the client knows best?  Shouldn't we ask what the impacts are to cost, service and customer experience?  Has anyone had these conversations as part of the sales process?

Moving the traditional call center thinking from price to value and overall return related to all metrics is often an intimidating conversation, the familiarity leads towards price per minute, average handle time and number of quality coaching sessions.

The idea of customer service focused companies in collaboration with clients and call centers may be a way to optimize core-competencies and bring a new benchmark metrics to the call center industry that are perhaps longer-term focused. These may include average length of customer, increase in average order size and repeat purchases.

I believe strategic alliances focused on the right areas will enhance any end customer and client experience. Has anyone had a successful experience with this approach?

Comments

[Martha Brooke]

As a Customer Experience Analyst I find that one of the most important analytics overlooked by call centers and their clients is brand compliance. In a simple way, brand compliance measurement identifies what percent of customer contacts: support the brand, miss the brand or denigrate the brand.

Why don’t clients ask their call centers to measure contact performance against brand specifics? The answer is worth pondering because in brand awareness studies relatively few customers remember the specifics of a particular ad yet nearly everyone remembers what happened when they called an 800 number or sent an email.

Client companies should hold their call centers responsible for branding and brand measurement. However, to my knowledge, we are the only company working with our clients to make this happen. Are our clients weird or what’s up? I think there are basically two reasons why branding and call centers are seldom in the same sentence.

1) The concept of branded execution is in its infancy. When the concept is mentioned in conferences, publications and books, mere lip service is given to the idea and the “how to” is unclear.
2) In many companies the divide between operations and marketing is seemingly impenetrable. This is unfortunate because the more these two teams intermingle the more compelling and memorable the customer experience will be.

Bottom Line: I agree with this article. There is more to a call center than 80/20, talk time, calls per hour, etc. And, while I have to acknowledge my bias as a strategic outsider, I believe tapping into outside talents is simply the swiftest, easiest way to create extraordinary value.