Consumers are becoming increasingly impatient and demanding of companies when it comes to customer service. Results from the 10th edition of Dimension Data’s Contact Center Benchmarking report reveal that call abandon rates---due to long hold times—increased in the past year by nearly 127%, representing nearly 14% of all calls. According to the report, callers are becoming more impatient and abandon a call after waiting on average 45 seconds in 2007, compared to 53 seconds in 1997.
An effective First Contact Resolution (FCR) program may be one way to reduce the number of lost calls, lost revenue and lost opportunity to improve consumers’ perception of your brand. The Yankee Group, a global connectivity consultant group, estimates that 30% to 35% of all calls coming into the average call center are unnecessary repeat customer calls. A major challenge to companies interested in improving their FCR results is to define it and capture the data needed to measure FCR effectively.
In its white paper, Best Practices for Implementing a First Contact Resolution Program in the Contact Center, the research group maintains that the ability to solve and close the customer’s issue during the first customer contact is the foremost KPI in evaluating a contact center’s overall operating performance.
Today’s organizations need to shift from measuring efficiency to measuring effectiveness in the eyes of the customers. Specifically, the Yankee Group recommends that efforts should focus on the following areas in order to improve FCR performance:
●Information systems: High-quality FCR strategies must be based on a single, consolidated view of the customer with strong ongoing analytics capabilities. Customer information should be consolidated and include unified transaction records from across all service channels (telephone, e-mail, chat, fax).
●Employee education: Employee education should be centered on the elimination and reduction of the repeat call. The educational program should be based on the supervisor’s role in monitoring agent performance, identifying coaching opportunities, detecting and selecting agents to be coached, and coaching, monitoring and tracking agent performance improvements in reducing repeat calls.
●FCR scoring system: The FCR team function should include the identification and documentation of FCR measurement criteria and a monitoring and scoring system that is accepted and approved by all involved parties.
●New forms of metrics. KPIs should be expanded beyond traditional enterprise efficiency metrics to customer feedback systems including measurements of customer service perceptions. New metrics such as customer satisfaction, interaction quality and corporate image need to be added to the KPI toolbox.