Metrics overview

Hi, everyone. Jeff Nicholson back here again with our special guest Ben Barton, and we, if you haven't already checked out, there's a great session that we just recorded as well on a day in the life of a contact center, highly recommend you check this out. Now let's drill into the metrics that matter when you go into a contact center and often sound like a very different language. We're going to give you the key things you need to know. Ben, why is it so important to focus on these metrics?

Great point, Jeff. Metrics are the lifeblood of any operation center. They are one of the most important tools that we use to refine and sharpen and fix our business. And so, first thing, you're going to hear if there's a new VP on the scene, or maybe a director or even a line-level supervisor or manager. They're going to come in and say, OK guys, what's the service level look like today? It's the first thing they want to know when they walk in, and service levels is an all-encompassing word for everything that we're seeing on the right and a lot more. And so, why are they important? And why does Pega do a good job at addressing some of these?

So let's start with the first couple. We have a AHT and ASA. You will need a secret decoder ring for all the acronyms inside an operation center. So average handle time, I think we're all familiar with. How long is it taking you to get through that interaction, right? Whether it's phone, whether it's chat, whether it's e-mail, how long is that taking, and the reason why that's important is because the longer the interaction time, the more costly it is to the organization.

And conversely, we have the average speed to answer right underneath. That's another one that we look at this key metric inside the service levels, and that is how fast are we answering those calls? You think about a large organization who gets, you know, hundreds of thousands of calls a day. It's because, you know, things start to queue up. They start to build, and so, how quickly are we able to address that customers need?

So a AHT, and ASA we're going to keep going with the A's here, but this is a different kind. This is After Call Work; tell us a little bit about this.

After-call work kind of ties into average handle time. There's some organizations that look at average handle time and incorporate after-call work. And then there's some that look at them separately. So if you think an average phone call inside a contact center is about six minutes in length. Well, sometimes that after-call work can be another six to eight minutes in length in itself, so the cost savings to reduce both of those is monumental, if you can figure out how to do that. The after-call work, that's where the agents, now placed out of queue, they are now entering the notes. They're putting them inside any legacy applications that they need to, and they're buttoning that all out before they put themselves back in queue to accept the next call or interaction that comes in.

Pega does an incredible job at this though, because of Pega Customer Service, we do have a zero wrap time which means the system is tracking all that information. It's automatically notating the back-end systems, and it's doing the legwork for that CSR, and all that means is a cost savings to the organization. And then, it puts them back inside that queue to start clearing out more of those customer interactions.

Actually, we would make a huge impact in these areas. Let's take a look at the next one now. FCR, what's this all about?

So first call resolution. That means if I'm the CSR and Jeff Nicholson contacts me, have I done everything in my power to ensure that there is no need for Jeff to contact us again? Oh, wait, a second. I forgot this. FCR is incredibly important. Companies use it; if we drop down a couple of bullet points, you see three-day repeat calls. So far, they drill into that first call resolution. So far that they look three days in the future and say you know what? Jeff called back in three days later, so we really didn't get first call resolution. We didn't do everything in our power to ensure his satisfaction that his need was resolved.

And as you know, Pega Customer Service, with their guided customer interactions, we really can guide our CSRs and then users through those steps to ensure that we really do hit first call resolution. And of course, we've seen a transition in the market here for customer service from call centers to contact centers to customer engagement centers really interacting across all channels, so that middle word there, call, sometimes changes to, of course, first contact resolution in many cases. Still, FCR so that that's very handy. How about abandon rate?

Yeah, the abandon rate. So that means how many people are giving up, right? If they're trying to come into a live chat. If they're trying to come in through a phone call, how many people are giving up and saying, you know what? I'm not getting the service that I need in the time that I need it. So I'm hanging up. I'm onto something new, and you know, that takes a big ding on the customer satisfaction at the end of the day, because if you can't get to your customer when and where they want to be met, then that's an issue. And so we keep track of that abandon rate to ensure that, uh, you know, we're getting to our customers when and where they need it.

Excellent, so I'm going to talk a little bit in a different vein here. Let's talk a little bit about Adherence.

Yeah, adherence, so that is key. So that's basically showing all right are our CSR, where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be there. Meaning are they showing up to work on time? Are they taking their breaks when they're scheduled? Are they taking their training when scheduled? All that is incredibly impactful inside of an operations center because time is money, and if they're not there when we schedule them, then that's a big deal.

And that brings us logically to the next word you're seeing here. Occupancy, right?

So occupancy is kind of staffing, right? That shows how much of our contact center is staffed and how much is not right. Are we working on all cylinders, or are we really just taxing our workforce? And really, what both of those come down to is employee satisfaction, and that's a big piece of it in an industry that turns over as much as it does, anywhere between 40 to 45 percent per year; you turning your workforce, you really want to focus on those metrics to ensure that you're making them happy and they want to stick around.

Well, that's another great metric on its own, isn't it? Agent turnover rate. So if you want to have a dialogue around this, ask them what their agent turnover rate, and again, you can typically see between that 35, 40 percent, and 45 percent in many cases, which is a huge cost to that business. Another reason why guided interactions are so valuable in Pega. Let's go down to the next category of Call Avoidance.

Call avoidance, so that's actually, that's been around forever. This is where, uh, you know, ties into the other ones, actually. Because call avoidance is, you know what? I'm just burnt out. I don't want to take another call. I've been getting nagged at all day, and so I'm just going to log myself or pull myself out of queue. And or maybe this, we'll call it cherry picking, maybe this task looks too difficult, so I'm going to skip over that one. I'm going to jump to the next one. And it's really…it's difficult. But again, that goes back into employee satisfaction, ensuring that they have the tools to make their day easy and efficient, and effective.

Absolutely. And one thing to keep in mind. Call avoidance can sound language-wise, like a call containment or call deflection, but it's very different. Containment and deflection is around how can they avert that outreach from the customer before it reaches an agent? So can they solve it in self-service? Can they solve it in the IVR before it actually reaches an agent, so different from call avoidance? Let's talk about conversion.

So, conversion, that's important for the sale center outbound. If we're trying to make proactive outreaches and get somebody to purchase maybe an upgrade or new product of ours, right? It's just like sales. What's that conversion rate look like? Also, we can look at that from a retention standpoint, you know, did we convert them back into a loyal customer to happy? Did we retain that customer?

And that remark around happiness takes us to these last two categories here of NPS and CES, and we're seeing these things trending in different directions. So let's talk about these.

Net Promoter Score has been around for a long time. It's a five-star ranking right one through five. Would you recommend this business to a friend or family member? Yes or no. One through five, right? Or how satisfied were you with your interaction, right? Five, very, very satisfied. One, not so much, but we're really seeing that shift.

Yeah, and, if you think about all the different channels that we have available to us today and now, we're seeing customer effort score, or CES, and what that means is how difficult is your service provider to interact with? Are you stuck on a website trying to get answers, and you can't find any? So then maybe you start chatting in, and maybe eventually you have to wind up calling in. That's not a very good customer experience, and it's a high effort on that customer's behalf rather than just interacting with one person getting what you need and then ending that interaction.

Absolutely. And when it comes to this other one here on the customer effort score, also keep in mind that we have great thought leadership around customer effort. You make it more effortless and frictionless for both the customer and the agent, and you can find that thought leadership in our White Paper on Pega.com on achieving digital customer service transformation.

Yeah.

Absolutely covered a lot of ground here, Ben, in a short amount of time. Thanks so much. And for those of you on today's session, we hope you check out some other sessions today.

Excellent, thanks for having me.

You have reached the end of this video.