First-call resolution

How do you make first-contact resolution a priority — and succeed — when you’re running a unionized call center and your customers’ stress levels are already high before they ever dial you up?

The contact center is the most reliable sensor an organization has to determine real-time customer needs. Improving its agility can put the organization back in the driver’s seat.

For years, contact centers have coveted a familiar list of key performance indicators -- service level, average speed of answer, number of calls handled, abandon rate, wrap-up time, et. al. But recent research suggests that no single KPI has a bigger impact on customer satisfaction than does first call resolution (FCR).

Customer feedback is one of the most powerful resources available to any enterprise. Contact centers provide access to this information and allow businesses to find the keys to customer satisfaction.

As the four people who regularly read my stuff already know, I have always had a penchant for rap and hip-hop, and often find ways to incorporate rapid-paced rhyme into my job.

Grabbing the attention of C-level execs has become less of a struggle for contact centers in recent years, what with the proliferation of reliable call reporting tools and customer satisfaction tracking systems.

Contact center managers too often obsess over what they come across in best-practice benchmark reports. They see that other centers are achieving loftier performance objectives or are able to retain agents without the use of force, and they immediately start thinking, "We need to do that, too."

Most indications are that small call centers (i.e., 20 or fewer agents) make up the fastest growing segment of the call center industry. New help desks, information lines, sales and customer service centers spring into existence daily. Often, managers new to call centers are assigned to these young operations. And therein lies an irony: in a number of fundamental ways, small call centers are more challenging to manage than large call centers.

For smaller call centers, the struggle to do more with less has been a long-time management ordeal. And as larger centers barrel ahead with the transition to the multichannel environment, the necessity for small operations to keep pace with the types of service options being offered has added a new dimension.

Focusing on first-call resolution and call resolution-both in-house and for outsourcers-results in better retention and more opportunities to deepen the customer relationship, according to benchmarking firm SQM Group.