Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

How to Assess Contact Center Success

December 06, 2018

Different organizations may have varying ideas of what makes for a good contact center. But, as in many areas of business, there are widely accepted best practices in the customer service arena. Here are some of them, along with a few specific suggestions on how contact centers can improve performance in 2019.


Capterra suggests that good contact centers manage key performance indicators like average time in queue, track churn rate and customer experience, and segment their customers, and use analytics.

FCR suggests contact centers might want to consider a few of these steps in the year ahead. They might want to integrate Slack with their support tools to allow for tighter integration with their knowledge base and ticketing system. They should enhance self-help options by putting content where customers are looking for it. They ought to track what customers are requesting. They should consider whether and when to update their knowledge base. They could better use human resources by packaging contact center training into bite-sized pieces so workers can ingest new information during small timeslots. And they could benefit from using speech and text analytics to better understand what makes for higher customer satisfaction and more sales.

Contact centers that want help understanding what they’re doing right and where they might need improvement can call on entities such as the International Customer Management Institute. ICMI has a Site Certification program that includes a formal assessment, an improvement and implementation period, a second audit, and certification. The program helps organizations improve financial performance, enhance customer satisfaction, garner more business intelligence, increase employee engagement, and standardize processes.

An April 2017 ICMI article says active vs. waiting calls, average handle time, customer service rating, and first call resolution are standard metrics to consider when developing an evaluation structure for contact center.  It notes that supervisors also should measure agents’ activity and efficiency. And it notes that “The key aspect of any business intelligence program is to ensure that progress directly relates to the contact center’s pre-determined business goals, and the data provided is evaluated correctly and analyzed routinely.”

ICMI recently provided such an assessment for government contractor WPS Health Solutions. The organizations say WPS passed the test with flying colors.

Wisconsin-based not-for-profit WPS provides administrative services to the U.S. government. That includes administering Part A and B Medicare benefits for millions of seniors in several states. WPS also serves millions of U.S. military, veterans, and their families.




Edited by Maurice Nagle



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