The Next Step in KPIs

Targets or goals, objectives or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)... All contact centres have them and all operational leads are trying to make sure they're concentrating on the right ones. But with so many different things going on in most contact centres, it's difficult to know which ones to aim for, and all too easy to blindly focus on what has always been done before.

Historically, contact centres looked towards the easy-to-measure numbers which were mostly statistics that could be obtained from telephony and CRM solutions, such as percentage of calls answered within X, average time spent doing Y, number of orders placed for Z. Of course, these were targeted not simply because the detail around them could be obtained but also because the numbers were important to the business and most still are. As part of running a successful business it's important to know how many sales call you need to make on average to sell something. It also helps make sure that you can coach and manage your team when they are under-performing.

Not surprisingly, technology has increased the opportunities in regards to choosing the right metrics to both measure and work towards. In the digital word where a customer tweet is accessible to the world to see (and share) the standard stats no longer rise to this challenge. Customer Satisfaction, First Contact Resolution and Net Promoter Score are all terms that have started to become commonplace over the last five years. But the new targets have brought with them their own share of challenges. Not least of which has been how to measure these things and where to get the data.

Luckily cloud technology has been able to help businesses bridge the gap between how they’d like to work and the reality of their day-to-day operations. By integrating products like CRM and telephony, you no longer need to have whole teams of data analysts extracting raw data from multiple systems daily, importing them into spreadsheets and databases. Receiving reports is no longer a once a day activity that needs to be sent via email. Products are sharing data and making it readily available for the right people to view and analyse.

With the challenges of gaining data and formatting removed, or at least reduced, it frees up the valuable time of the MI teams and operational managers to concentrate on both choosing the right new metrics and working towards improving these. The time and energy is no longer spent producing the data, but in impacting the drivers behind it. So what really impacts your business? What do your customers really want out of their interactions with you? And how can you give it to them?

Download our new whitepaper and find out:

• What KPIs you should be measuring
• How to use the data you have more effectively in driving improvements
• 18 considerations to help shape your KPI measurements

Image courtesy of bplanet at FreeDigitalPhotos.net