When it comes to call centers, a data-driven strategy is essential for improving operations. Call tracking metrics allow managers to review precise data on how agents are performing. Regardless of what type of phone system you’re using, tracking and reviewing these metrics on a regular basis can help you maximize your efficiency and improve customer satisfaction.
Here are six key call tracking metrics, along with what they indicate and how you can use them to benefit your business.
How to Use Call Center KPIs to Boost Efficiency and Reduce Expenses
1. Average Minutes Per Call
Calculating the average length of your calls lets you know how much time your agents spend on the phone with each customer. Set a benchmark time for your agents to meet, and then compare each agent’s average against this measure. Home in on individual agents who consistently exceed the benchmark and find out why they're going over the limit. Are they spending more time than necessary with customers? Do you need to provide more training sessions? Or are there lingering issues that need to be addressed by the product team?
To make things fun, offer an Amazon gift card to the agent with the best results that month. A bit of an incentive can give your team the spark they need to improve their on-call performance.
2. Average Calls Per Hour
Looking at your average calls per hour throughout the day makes it easy to see your call center's busiest windows. A graphical representation of this metric can reveal patterns over time, and aggregating average calls per day can show how your call volume fluctuates over longer periods of time.
With this data, you can do a better job of scheduling staff to maximize efficiency. You can assign additional agents, or those with more experience, to bolster your call operation during peak hours. During slower periods, you can staff the minimum number of agents needed to adequately handle the phone calls.
3. Average Number of Agents Available Per Hour
This metric tells you how much idle time your agents have. Like average calls per hour, agent availability allows you to make key personnel decisions. If you notice that more than half your agents are free during a given time period, you can reduce the number of employees. On the flip side, if you have less than one agent available on average, consider adding another agent to lower the number of callers waiting on the line.
.jpg?width=892&name=P2%20(iStock-839818410).jpg)
4. Average Caller Wait Time
According to a 2021 Invoca Buyer Experience Benchmark Report, five percent of callers in their study hung up immediately when put on hold and another 28 percent hung up after five minutes or less. That's why it's imperative to answer calls in a timely fashion. Average call wait time is another metric that needs a benchmark for comparison. Two minutes or less is a good range to aim for. If it gets above this range, talk to your team about strategies for reducing wait time. Here are some ideas:
- Record your team's calls and examine the outliers that seem to drive the numbers up. 1
- Check your other call tracking metrics to see if more people are waiting during certain time periods.
- Engage in persona training with your sales agents so they can read customers quicker.
5. Maximum Caller Wait Time
Most data sets have outliers, so don’t get too alarmed if you see a large maximum wait time. This number is certainly worth investigating and call metrics can help. Is this maximum wait time truly a single event, or a pattern of rising wait times? Cross reference this data point with your average wait time.
Ideally, your average and maximum call wait times should be similar, unless there was some unusual activity on a certain day. If you're consistently seeing short average wait times but high maximum wait times, it's a sign to dig deeper and figure out what's causing the discrepancy.
6. Average Number of Callers Waiting
This metric tells you how many people are waiting for their calls to be answered at any time. Consider the hourly distribution of average callers waiting and note what time periods seem to have the most people on hold.
You can also compare average number of callers waiting to average calls per hour to see if they're proportional. If the average number of callers waiting increases more than the average calls per hour, that indicates you're probably not staffing enough agents to meet the surge in call traffic. To run your call center efficiently, you need to find that sweet spot where the average number of callers waiting declines while your average number of available agents per hour rises to meet, but not exceed, the volume of calls.
Analyzing these six call center KPIs and metrics will give you a better understanding of how your call center is performing. The insights you gain can help you create efficient employee schedules, cut unnecessary staffing, discover weak points, optimize your resources, and guide your hiring decisions. But ultimately, these metrics are a way to keep your customers happy, retain business and earn more revenue.
OnSIP makes it easy for customers to track their phone system metrics through call detail records or in real time on the enhanced queue dashboard. Discover more on our inbound call center solutions blog post.
1. It is your responsibility to ensure you are complying with any applicable laws requiring consent prior to recording calls.