Call centers are incredibly useful for businesses of various sizes. Rather than having to staff an entire department which is responsible for taking calls, a business can rely on a call center to handle this vital function.

As a business owner, it’s easy to see the appeal in this option, but how do you know if your call center is performing at a high level? You shouldn’t just assume that answering services are doing their job, especially when you can monitor key metrics which speak to their success or failure.

Availability Is Essential

smiling young female call center agent working with a laptop

One of the easiest and most important metrics to monitor is simply the percentage of calls which are getting through to an available agent. In other words, how many people are being turned away by a busy signal? Every call which fails to get through the phone answering service is a failure, so it should go without saying that maximizing availability is vital.

Time Is Money – For Everyone

Many of the metrics which are used to monitor call center performance involve measuring time in one way or another. A few examples are as follows:

  • Answer speed. Quite simply, how quickly is the phone being answered? Callers would obviously prefer to have their calls answered as soon as possible, so minimizing the time that they have to wait before hearing a voice will be a performance benefit.
  • Average time waiting. When callers do need to wait on hold for an available agent, how long do they wait? Again, it’s about minimizing waiting in order to boost caller satisfaction.
  • Handle time. One of the frequently used metrics in the call center world is handle time. This is a measure of how long, on average, it takes an agent to handle the needs of a caller.

Get It Right the First Time

Finally, one of the best ways to track whether or not a call center is getting the job done is to measure first call resolutions. When someone calls with an issue, resolving that issue on the first call is highly correlated with customer satisfaction. A quality call center should be able to keep first call resolution at a healthy level.

To work with a call center that is committed to performing well on all of these metrics and more, contact Personalized Communications right away. Our team is ready to serve you and your customers!