In a recent article for CXM Today, we gave our complete guide to call center tools and metrics to drive CX growth. We encourage you to check it out. 
But, for those ready to dive in now, we draw similar conclusions in our advice for how using CX metrics more strategically can best guide your labor and technology choices.
The issue? KPI tunnel vision is holding your CX initiatives back.
The Problem with KPI Tunnel Vision
Leaders often challenge their team to elevate key performance indicators – or KPIs – as a blanket CX initiative. And this typically fails for one of three reasons:
First, it’s unrealistic to achieve all things at once; if you’re focused on all your KPIs at once, you’re actually focused on nothing.
Second, leaders often view the issue as binary, optimize labor or optimize technology, when CX empowerment relies heavily on both.
Lastly, some metrics are synergistic with strongly correlated outcomes, where others can be distinct and have more opaque connection to each other.
Take Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), for instance. Metrics like First Call Resolution and Average Handle Time (AHT) exhibit contrasting dynamics.
To illustrate, consider a cleaning service: achieving high CSAT scores is intrinsically linked to successfully resolving issues on the first attempt (akin to effectively cleaning a space). However, the speed of service (AHT) holds little significance if the quality of the cleaning remains subpar.
It’s more important to you and your customer if you understand the nuance between different metrics and their respective impacts.
Prioritize CX Efficacy Over Metric-Centric Strategies
As a leader, you should strive to find a balanced mix of metrics that matter to your business, balancing both quantitative and qualitative indicators to drive better CX.
The good news: no one knows your business better than you do, so you are best suited to build toward the outcomes that mean the most for your growth.
As you consider which strategic CX metrics matter most to you, here are some of the most common types:
The Metrics to Monitor for Call Center CX
In our feature with CXM Today, we detailed the metrics that we felt mattered most for call center operations and CX initiatives moving forward.
Inbound Call Center Metrics:
Customer Experience Metrics:
- NPS (Net Promoter Score): Evaluates customer loyalty and their likelihood to recommend your service.
- CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Scores): Reflects overall satisfaction with your service.
- FCR (First Contact Resolution): Measures the percentage of customer issues resolved in the initial interaction.
- CES (Customer Effort Score): Gauges the ease of issue resolution for customers.
Agent Performance Metrics:
- QA (Quality Assurance): Ensures interaction quality meets established standards.
- Agent Utilization Rate: Tracks active call handling time versus idle time.
- Occupancy Rate: Indicates agent activity as a percentage of total logged-in time.
- ASA (Average Speed of Answer): Average wait time before a customer’s call is answered.
- AHT (Average Handle Time): Average duration of each customer interaction.
Contact Center Performance Metrics:
- CPC (Cost Per Call): Calculates operational costs per call.
- SL% (Service Level): Percentage of calls answered within a predefined time frame.
- Call Volume: Total incoming calls for resource planning.
- Abandonment Rate: Rate at which customers disconnect before reaching an agent.
Outbound Call Center Metrics:
- Connect Rate: Percentage of outbound calls successfully connecting to a live person, indicating the effectiveness of the call list.
- Conversion Rate: Percentage of outbound calls achieving their intended outcome, such as a sale or appointment.
- CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): Calculates the cost associated with acquiring a new customer through outbound efforts.
- Calls Per Agent: Reflects the productivity of agents in making outbound calls, indicating their efficiency and effectiveness.
Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach; your unique business objectives will dictate what is most important for you – and benchmarking metrics and technology solutions can add clarity to that larger question.
Have Questions About CX Strategy?
Our partners work with us to address a variety of CX-related challenges they face, such as:
- How is my call center performing relative to other call centers?
- How are my costs relative to comparable call center rates?
- Which metrics should we prioritize, based on our core objectives?
- What technology (AI or otherwise) should we be exploring?
- How can we reduce costs while growing CX simultaneously?
If you’re ready to start a conversation – let us send you a no-obligation call center cost analysis to get started.
