Top Call Center Metrics and KPIs to Measure Your Agent’s Productivity

Any company has a primary goal of being productive every day and being better at their performance. You need to work on what increases your company’s employee engagement, profits, and most importantly, your customer’s experience.

A company’s success solely depends on all these while managing the timing.

If you own a call center, the productivity needed to be maintained is difficult and is the call agent’s responsibility.

Maintaining productivity seems easy but isn’t, and an efficient agent contributes to increasing the call center’s productivity.  

You need to understand that the increasing number of calls, the customer demand, and the agent’s ability to handle the customers directly affect the success of a call center.

You need to be aware of the productivity of your agent in the call center.

In this article, we will discuss some important call center metrics and KPIs to measure and analyze the agent’s performance and productivity. 

What do Metrics and KPI Mean in a Call Center?

Metrics are the quality measures of ensuring the making the work of the customer service team is effective.

Metrics are used for different areas in a call center, such as measuring agent productivity, evaluating customer experience, performance, and many more.

Key Performance Indicators are the measures that the customer service providers managing team monitors to know the productivity and efficiency of the call center’s success to reach the business goal.

These indicators help you have a clear focus on your goals and define a proper strategy for your business.

Why is Call Center Metrics Important?

Your company seems productive when you’ve accomplished a specific work with a particular time allotted for it. Call centers should be focused on the optimum output with good performance and efficient dealings.

So, why are some of the important call center metrics required for your call center to work productively?

1. Improving Agent Productivity

One of the major qualities required to successfully run a call center is to improve your agent’s productivity. You need to use call metrics to determine the performance and dedication of your employees.

You need to monitor the productivity of your agents to calculate the success rate of your company. The more efficient your employee is, the better will be the performance of your company.

2. Performance Metrics: Productivity and Customer Service

The primary basis of the success of a call center is solely based on customer experience. Providing high-quality service to your customer isn’t enough, and you need to be able to provide them the service efficiently and on time.

Not making your customer wait on the call for too long and tackling their issues as soon as possible will improve the customer experience and make them happier.

Also Read: 8 Ways to Motivate Your Call Center Agents in 2021

How are Call Center Metrics and KPIs Measured for Call Center Productivity?

All the call center metrics and KPIs are measured using particular algorithms and formulae. There is a simple formula to evaluate your agent’s productivity that will help you monitor the productivity of all your customer-related services.

You can calculate the occupancy rate to evaluate the agent’s productivity. The occupancy rate helps calculate the time your agent fulfills their customer-related services such as receiving calls, participating in different pieces of training, filling out the necessary forms, and many more.

The productivity formula is as follows:

(Total Output/Total Input) * 100= Agent Productivity

Where the total output is the time spent dealing with customers and performing required administrative responsibilities, the total input is the working hours of the agents daily.

Top Call Center Metrics and KPI

Now, let’s finally dive into some metrics and performance evaluators to calculate your agent’s and the call center’s productivity.

1. Average Handle Time(AHT)

Average Handle Time is a KPI that helps you handle the average time that your agent spends on each call. You can know the progress by the duration of the call, and the shorter it is, the faster the problem is solved.

This KPI tracks the call duration from which the agent receives it until the ticket is closed. The measure includes the total amount of time the agent spends on one customer.

The main intention of using this KPI is to measure the minimum and maximum call duration it takes to solve your customer’s problem, pin their address, and everything necessary. After you know the extreme time points, you can brief your agents to try to finish the call within them.

2. First Response Time

First Response Time is a KPI that measures the time between a problem issued by the customer to when an agent addresses it. The FRT should be encouraged to have less time so that productivity is increased.

The sooner you address your customer’s problems, the better customer service they experience. It is crucial to make your customers have a good service by providing them with an instant solution to their problem addressed on time.

3. Average Speed to Answer

The average time speed to answer is a metric that can evaluate your agents’ time to answer a customer’s call. Making your customer wait for a long time will degrade the customer experience, not giving you a good outcome.

According to the study done by a Call center helper, 80% of the calls are answered in 20 seconds, making the average time the calls are answered as 28 seconds. 

4. Call Abandonment Rate

The call abandonment rate refers to the average number of callers who hang up the phone before getting addressed by any agent or reaching to them. The hang-up call phenomenon is very common among call centers.

You will not show great performances to your callers if they don’t reach your agents. The increasing call abandonment rate shows some problems with all of the agent’s productivity instead of individual agents.

5. Average Time in Queue

It is also important to measure average time in the queue in order to measure agent productivity. The ratio is calculated by dividing the number of calls in the queue by the number of calls answered.

You can help improve your customer’s experience by keeping track of the average time in the queue and maintaining your agent’s productivity. 

You can increase the productivity of your agent and make them handle the calls efficiently. You can also add the feature to call back, which can be more customer-friendly and effective. 

6. Call Center Shrinkage

Not all employees will remain active and productive throughout the day. Due to tardiness and long breaks during the office working hours, their productivity diminishes greatly. These types of behaviors due to which call center agents are unable to perform their tasks despite being paid for the job is called call center shrinkage.

Shrinkage in a call center is a measure of the number of agents available to make calls vs the numbers of agents need to make calls. It can be calculated by using the following formula.

Taking note of the shrinkage and working to reduce it, a call center can ensure improved productivity of the employees. And eventually, it increases the efficiency of a call center.

Finally

It is quite a job to handle your employees and agents and make them productive. They have a vital role to play in running a successful company. If they give your customers better service and experience, your company will rush towards success.

You need to use certain call center analytic tools that will help you measure the call center metrics and KPIs to improve your agent’s productivity. You need to keep track of where the agents are not efficient and how you can make them work properly. 

Having a record of all the analytics helps you understand what is going wrong to improve in that very field. You need to use the technology and training to its best to measure your agent’s productivity and help improve them. 

Thus, measuring the Call center metrics and KPIs will help you improve and increase your agent’s productivity and effectiveness in their work which will help flourish your company while providing a better experience for your customers.

Arun Chaudhary

Arun is SEO Analyst at KrispCall. He has written in extensively in the field of cloud telephony and call center solutions.