Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

We all know first call resolution (one and done) is the #1 driver for customer satisfaction with best practices reported at 86 percent. However, this means that 14 percent of your customers are contacting you more than once (even more than twice or three times) to resolve their issues! This not only frustrates your CSRs and yourselves, but your customers as well. Repeat calls are costly not only to operations and the bottom line, but they negatively impact customer satisfaction. 

 

Here are some questions to ponder. How do you define first call resolution? And how do you calculate it? Research shows that there is no common method for measuring this. But what gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed gets better.

 

In a recent study (Ascent Group) more than 90 percent of companies measuring first call resolution reported improvement in their performance. Another study (callcentres.com) reported a dramatic fall in call volume, identifying that a minimum of 20 percent of all calls were repeat contacts from customers needing an answer or help they didn’t get. Further, the absence of first call resolution was found to account for a minimum of 30 percent of a call center’s operational costs!

 

The bottom line: Invest in your people; give them the training, the tools, and the authority to get their job done right the first time. 

 

We’re finding that quite a number of centers do not measure FCR, and for those that do, there is still no standard for this measurement. 

 

Following are suggested questions to ponder:

 

+ What percent of your customer’s concerns and/or questions are handled on first contact?

+ How frequently do your customers contact you?

+ Do you/can you identify repeat calls?

+ Do you/can you segment responses by call type?

+ Do you ask your customers if their concern was resolved, and how many contacts this required?

 

The more you can drill down your data, the more actionable and accurate the outcome.

Of course, the best measurement of FCR lives with your customers. So go to the source. Find out if they think their issues and/or questions are being resolved on the first contact. Your metrics alone, although quantifiable, are indirect; they are only approximations of customer opinion and could easily be overstated. Many times the customer’s view is lower than these measurements.

 

From an Ascent Group Study (2003), the four primary ways of measuring FCR were:

 

 

Your front lines are the interface with customer’s issues. One of the foremost methods to boost customer satisfaction and improve FCR is to consistently and ongoing train your people in world class customer service skills.

 

The bottom line once again: Invest in your people. Give them the training, the tools, and the authority to get their job done right the first time.