We recently compared our clients’ performance to several standard industry benchmarking reports and found that their performance was superior on most of the relevant KPI’s. Here we share some top tips on how you too can achieve a healthier performance.
As well as helping you get your KPI’s outperforming others, which we’ll look at below, we’d like to point out that there are three general drivers behind these companies performing better.
1. Organisations that are serious about understanding and improving their performance are more likely to engage in benchmarking.
2. Most of the UK providers of benchmarking will give hands on recommendations on how to narrow the gap to best practice.
3. Prioritisation. Most Customer Service Directors know their under-performing areas but are not sure on where to focus to get the maximum R.O.I. Comparing yourself to top performers will help with this.
Beating the rest on… FCR
Top performers have resolution scores of over 90%. However, it is dangerous to compare this KPI across sectors; results vary significantly depending on what contacts you are handling. The top performers all have a number of things in common. For example, they all conduct systematic and ongoing monitoring of why customers are calling and are able to do continuous root cause analysis; they have good knowledge management systems in place to support advisors; they offer more training; and their advisors have a mandate to solve more customer problems than at other companies.
Beating the rest on… Self Service
The graph here shows our clients Self Service Levels being higher than non-clients. Is a higher level of self-service good though? Yes, as long as it has a user centred design and customers have the option to speak to a live agent; we see a correlation between high self service levels and customer satisfaction. For simple queries, customers prefer fast and easy to use self-service solutions.
Beating the rest on… Call Duration
Despite more complex calls being handled due to higher self-service levels, and most organisations throwing out AHT as a target for advisors; call duration is still a management metric that can be used to lower costs. If you mix your productivity stats with customer satisfaction scores, you can do this without risking a backlash in CSAT.
The graph below shows an example of comparing call duration and product knowledge (as scored by customers) giving the contact centre manager a much better idea of who the true best advisors are, the ones that are efficient AND score high with customers.
Be bold and compare yourself to the best, only then will you know how to beat them!