5 Contact Centre Metrics To Improve Customer Experience

In this article, we examine contact centre metrics and the vital role they play in improving the agent and customer experience. Customer satisfaction is directly linked to the growth of your business, your bottom line and employee engagement. If you’re not tracking the right metrics, you’re never going to be able to maximise the ROI on your CX investment.

In today’s competitive environment, across almost every market, consumers typically have any number of suppliers to choose from. Companies that listen and are constantly in tune with their customers have a distinct advantage over those that don’t.

By measuring customer sentiment with key metrics, you can begin to understand how well your customers perceive your team and work on improving your customer experience across the board.

 

The importance of data in improving customer experience

 

Metrics are vital because they show us where we stand with customer satisfaction and agent productivity in a meaningful, comparable way that allows us to set realistic goals. They also highlight areas of concern and opportunities for improvement.

When we know what’s working and what’s not, we can continuously update our approach and make changes to improve our customer service and productivity.

 

Contact centre metrics to improve customer experience

 

There are hundreds of different metrics you could track, but the trick is to focus on those that are most relevant to your business and the promises that you make to your customers.

Here are some key metrics that can help you to evaluate and improve your experience:

 

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

 

The net promoter score (NPS) is often called a net multiplier of growth because it can determine customer loyalty and its influence on future customers. It’s simple because it’s a single question:

‘On a scale of 1-10, how likely is it that you would recommend [your brand] to a friend or colleague?’

Promoters are those that give scores of 9-10, while Passives and Detractors give scores of 7-8 and 0-6 respectively. It’s a no-BS measure and you can read more about the scoring system here.

 

 

 

How is NPS calculated?

 

Customer surveys are the most effective way to measure your NPS, and you can calculate it using this formula:

(Number of Promoters ÷ Total Number of Customers in the Sample) – (Number of Detractors ÷ Total Number of Customers in the Sample)

Passive customers don’t count. Scores above 50 indicate generally loyal and satisfied customers, whereas scores below 50 are an indicator of unsatisfied customers.

NPS is a quick and easy way for customers to provide some feedback, but you need to follow up and dig into the why.

 

How to improve your NPS

 

• Engage with detractors by following up on a negative experience and trying to resolve their situations. Customers who have a negative experience that is dealt with well, typically become more loyal than if they had never had a bad experience in the first place!

 

• Focus on retaining promoters — reach out to your promoters and find out what else you can do to satisfy and exceed their expectations.

 

• Discover and understand common customer pain points and create an action plan that addresses these issues. Make it a part of a continual process of eliminating NPS black spots.

 

Returning customers need to see you can take on board their feedback and are committed to them.

 

2 – First Call Resolution (FCR) is crucial for customer experience

 

FCR measures the percentage of calls it takes for the customer to get his or her desired outcome – without having to make a second phone call or go back online. In other words, FCR is your ability to resolve customer problems, questions, or concerns the first time they engage with you, with no follow-up required.

FCR reflects a common ethos for many organisations – “promises made and promises kept”. Having insights into this metric also prevents customers from enduring multiple callbacks and call transfers that would likely lead to churn.

You can read more about FCR and how to improve it in this blog post.

 

3 Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

 

While NPS can give you a perspective on future revenues, CSAT is an excellent indicator of customer experience history with a particular product or service. Unlike NPS, however, there isn’t any standard way to calculate this KPI.
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The most accurate way to measure it is to ask customers to rank their experience with a service or product experience from 1-5, 1-10, or “not satisfied” to “very satisfied”. This way you can identify pain points and areas where you can improve. For example:

“Did [product x] do what you wanted it to do?” or “Are you satisfied that [agent y] resolved your issue?”

The final score is determined by how many positive responses you get through customer reviews and ratings divided by the total responses. The higher the score, the happier your customers are. This is an effective way to measure a new or change to your CX design.

 

How to improve CSAT

 

Send post-interaction surveys that are short and easy to complete. Collect and analyse the data so you know which areas customers are not satisfied with and how you can improve in those specific areas. Twilio can automate your NPS and CSAT survey and can align the results by agent, service, skill, or channel.

 

4 – Channel Mix

 

The medium is the message. This is why we must understand our societal norms and expectations so we can use each channel appropriately. This crucial metric indicates which channels your customers prefer for communication.

 

Popular channels include:

• Voice
• Email
• Social media
• SMS
• Mobile
• Live messaging

 

Calculating this metric is easy — simply measure the total number of customer service sessions per channel over a given period. This enables you to concentrate on refining preferred channels and avoid wasting resources on channels that customers don’t gravitate towards.

 

 

5 – Customer Retention Rate (CRR)

 

Customer retention rates measure the number of customers a company retains over a given period.

There’s a simple reason why this metric is so important: Keeping existing customers is a lot less expensive than trying to win new ones. Loyal customers also contribute to your brand reputation by providing referrals and giving feedback on your product or service.

CRR directly impacts your bottom line, too. According to one study, a 5% increase in customer retention results in a profit increase of 25% to 95%.

To determine your retention rate, firstly identify the time frame you want to study. Depending on your industry, this could be quarterly, monthly, weekly, or even daily.

 

Next, collect these three pieces of information:

• The number of existing customers at the start of the time period (S)
• The number of total customers at the end of the time period (E)
• The number of new customers added within the time period (N)

 

Finally, plug the data into this formula to get your CRR rate: [(E-N)/S] x 100

 

How to improve your CRR and customer experience

 

• Set realistic expectations and then strive to go above and beyond those expectations
• Communicate regularly and build trust with your customers
• Take a proactive approach and deal with problems as soon as possible

 

Twilio Flex can provide the metrics to improve customer experience

 

Twilio Flex is a fully programmable, cloud-based contact centre solution that allows you to add remote agents, new channels, chatbots, and self-service as you scale.

Flex helps developers build and deploy a 100% cloud-based contact centre, integrating all of your communication channels including voice, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WebChat into a single platform.

Having all of this data available, fully integrated into a single source, allows you to compile incredibly powerful metrics and reports that you can use as the foundation for goal setting, performance measurement and service improvements.

And with Flex Insights, you can customise your reports to track the call centre performance metrics that matter most to your business.

 

Kaptea is your Twilio consulting partner

 

Most businesses know that they are losing customers due to poor communication and customer experiences. But they don’t know how to fix it.

At Kaptea, we can optimise how you integrate and use Twilio in your business, and we empower you to create digital experiences that your customers will love and that provide a genuine return on investment.

If you need help defining and tracking the metrics you need to supercharge your customer experience, talk to a Twilio expert today.