Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are crucial measurements of the success of your company, as they relate to some aspect of your business. Once you’ve identified the areas which are important for you to keep track of, you can make these your primary focus, and relate those same objectives to all employees, so that everyone is in in sync with what you’re trying to achieve.
For instance, there are some very definite factors to measure when evaluating the effectiveness of your company’s telephone system, and since your business communications come through that call center, it is well worth your while to focus on how well communications are being handled. It might even be more important to track phone system KPI’s if your phone provider is a managed service, so you’re sure your company is being well-served. Here are some of the most important factors to monitor with your company’s telephone system.
Time to answer
This metric is important for two reason: a low number (expressed in seconds) shows that less time is being wasted before answering a call, and as every business person knows, time is money. Secondly, customers who are calling you will quickly become frustrated if their calls aren’t being answered promptly, and that may lead them into becoming a statistic in the next KPI category below.
Abandon rate
This KPI is often expressed as a percentage, and it represents the number of callers who do not reach a representative quickly enough to suit them, and hang up before talking with anyone. If this percentage reaches a significant number, it’s a good indicator that you are probably losing business because customers aren’t being serviced promptly.
Hold time
Just like it sounds, this is an expression in seconds, of the time duration that a caller is kept on hold while waiting to talk to an agent, or someone specific within your organization. A high number here can quickly lead to caller frustration, increasing the abandon rate.
Transfer rate
Generally measured as a percentage, this KPI shows how many calls had to be transferred by an agent before reaching the final destination. While there are several reasons why a call might need to be transferred, and not all of them reflect badly on the system or the agent, a high number is still not a good thing.
First call resolution
While this may be more of a measurement of agent performance rather than the phone system itself, it is one of the important KPI’s associated with the effectiveness of your company communications, and still needs to be monitored. What is being measured is the percentage of calls which are successfully handled by the answering agent or automated system on the very first call, which means the call is not transferred to another department, does not require a callback to the caller, and does not force the caller to make a second call to your business.
