What Are Call Tracking Metrics?

Call centers handle complaints, help you identify pain points, and standardize the customer experience and you need the right call tracking metrics to understand performance. The vast majority of consumers prefer to speak with a company representative when they have a question. But more and more, customers appreciate knowing that they can communicate with a company via text or through other communication channels. Either way, consumers expect more personalized service than they’ve typically gotten in the past.

One great way to improve your customer service and sales processes? Set essential call tracking metrics.

With call metrics, you have a standard way to evaluate your call center’s performance. Call center analytics can also provide you with insight into areas of improvement and promote accountability for your call center’s performance.

In this guide, we provide an overview of what call metrics are and why call tracking software is so essential for modern businesses. We’ll also discuss how to benchmark call center software and use it to improve call center performances across various industries.

What Are Call Tracking Metrics?

Call tracking metrics are a way to measure data about voice calls, so you track:

• Call center agent performance

• Customer satisfaction

• Call volume

• Length of calls

• Call center efficiency

It’s common for people to use the term call tracking metrics in connection with KPIs (key performance indicators). While the two terms are inherently connected, they have different definitions.

Call metrics track the status of various business processes. On the other hand, KPIs help you track how close you are to hitting your business goals. Generally, KPIs have targets, specific time frames for hitting targets, and a direct relation to business outcomes.

There isn’t a single metric or KPI that determines the entire customer experience, but the collective set of metrics provide a good picture of how your call center is doing. By setting up the right call metrics and KPIs, you can learn a lot about your customers and how they interact with your call center agents.

The Importance of Call Tracking Software

It’s tempting to set up a call center for inbound calls and outbound calls and let it run itself, but it’s highly doubtful that such an approach would have any degree of success. There would be no way of knowing whether your call center agents were giving good customer service or whether your customers were satisfied.

With call tracking software, you don’t have to operate in the dark or hope that your call center agents are delivering the kind of customer experience today’s customers have come to expect.

Here are some of the biggest reasons why it’s so important to implement call tracking software for your call center. With a call center you can:

• Operate a successful inbound or outbound call center.

• Set up a virtual call center with remote and/or distributed teams.

• Set up a call center for sales or customer support.

• Get insight from your call center dashboard whether you’re using on-site or virtual teams.

• Get real-time data that will help you make quick decisions about scaling your call center teams.

• Use your call analytics dashboard to understand how efficiently your call center is running.

• Get data that gives you an objective way to evaluate your call center on an individual, team, and overall basis.

• Get data to help in forecasting sales and support needs.

Now that you know what call tracking metrics can do for you, we’ll look at how to leverage call center metrics.

How to Leverage Metrics to Improve Performance

Let’s break down the definition of call center metrics. Call center metrics are much like call tracking metrics, in that they use measurements and call center KPIs to measure your call center’s performance.

But getting data from your call center dashboard is only half the battle. The other half is knowing what to do with your call center metrics. There are two distinct ways to leverage call center metrics:

1. Using historical data

2. Using real-time data

Considering that the best predictor of future needs is past needs, historical data will help you make more effective decisions. Call tracking metrics give you historical data on voice calls during specific timeframes. You can easily get a look at call center data for the year, the quarter or even a season, certain shift, or special promotion period.

While historical data is certainly helpful, it’s also good to know what’s going on in the call center currently. With call tracking metrics, you can get instant information about what’s happening in your call center at any time, even if your call teams are working remotely. Real-time data is helpful for identifying immediate issues within the call center—such as an increase in call volume—so you can manage it quickly.

Benchmarking Against Call Center Metrics Industry Standards

Nearly every industry can benefit from call center software, but research still needs to be done to identify specific benchmarks for a wide variety of industries.

In this section, we look at call center benchmarks in general and in the e-commerce industry. We also discuss how two specific industries—healthcare and financial, specifically—can leverage call center metrics for better performance.

Call Center Benchmarks Across Industries

• Answer:

  • 80% of the calls within 20 seconds

  • 100% of emails within 24 hours

  • 80% of chats within 20 seconds

  • 80% of SMS messages within 40 seconds

• Monitor 1-2 customer interactions every week

• Resolve 70% to 75% of problems on the first call

• Average call handling time is 6 minutes and 3 seconds

• Achieve a Net Promoter Score above 0

• Staff your call center at 85%-90% capacity

eCommerce Call Center Metrics

• Answer emails within 6 hours

• Answer phone calls within 1-2 minutes

• Resolve problems on the first call 45% of the time

• Prioritize call center agents according to the type of service

  • For example: top performers are returns/exchanges, delivery status, and billing

• Offer self-service options if your customers prefer it (over 67% do)

• Offer multiple communication channels and track each of them (73% of customer like to use more than one)

Healthcare Call Center Metrics

While we don’t have specific data on call center metric benchmarks for the healthcare industry just yet, we know that call centers help healthcare organizations to improve access to care and clinical outcomes.

Here are some of the benefits of call center metrics for healthcare institutions:

• Provide more personalized service

• Support HIPAA compliance

• Promote efficiency with options for live agents and self-service

• Provide a multi-channel customer experience

• Analyze call volumes by segment including patients, providers, caregivers, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies

• Track types of inquiries: insurance, health, medicines, COVID-19, etc.

• Facilitate appointment reminders

Financial Services Call Center Metrics

These are some of the ways that finance companies use call center metrics:

• Measuring call volume

• Evaluating call handling time for various types of financial transactions (average is 282 seconds)

• Calculating the number of contacts to make conversions

• Evaluating customer satisfaction

• Assessing average wait time

• Understanding the cost per acquisition

• Gathering sales per agent

• Learning about the call abandon rate

Improving Agent Performance From Call Tracking Metrics

You can use a variety of call tracking metrics to motivate your call center agents to improve their performance. Here are some ways you might use call tracking metrics:

• Scaling your call center so call agents aren’t too busy or too idle

• Giving agents targeted feedback on the number of calls they handle

• Setting up fair reward systems for call center agents

• Setting up goals for agents and evaluating their performances objectively

• Monitoring the call center in real-time to make timely decisions about scaling and call handling

• Monitoring calls to assess training needs

Achieving Your Call Center Goals and Metrics With Call Tracking

Before you start with call tracking metrics, you have to set your sales or support goals. Then, once you’ve set your goals, you need to ask yourself what data you need to achieve those goals.

You can take a look at the call metrics that are in your dashboard. Identify which of them will give you the right data to lead you in the direction of achieving your goals.

These are just some of the many call tracking metrics that you can use to improve your teams and processes:

1. Volume of calls

2. First call resolution

3. Average call time

4. First call resolution

5. Number of calls answered

6. Average speed of answer

7. Number of missed calls

8. Average amount of time to return a missed call

9. Conversion rate

10. Average call wait times

11. Customer call frequency

Conclusion

The business world is a data-driven world. Likewise, successful call centers rely on analytics—specifically, call metrics and KPIs—to measure the call center’s performance.

Aircall’s cloud-based phone system offers a robust analytics dashboard that:

• Gives you many options for setting up call metrics

• Provides data and reports you need to inform good decision-making

• Improves efficiency and effectivity across the board

Contact us to schedule a demo today!