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How to Find More Meaning from Your Contact Center Metrics

As 2018 winds to a close, it’s a natural time for contact center leaders to reflect on the year’s achievements, evaluate employee performance, and review and revise goals for the coming year. The meetings and conversations that happen this time of year present a great opportunity to reconsider which metrics are most important -- or risk falling into the trap of doing what’s always been done.
 
One of the best exercises that I did every year as a contact center leader was to evaluate whether our metrics were providing the most meaningful measures of success. Answering the following set of questions enables you to clarify priorities, engage your employees, and align your resources with the desired outcomes that your organization wants to pursue.
 
1. What outcomes matter most to your business? Your customers? Your employees?
These groups each have a distinct set of expectations and your metrics should indicate whether we’re delivering on what matters most to them. Business metrics for the contact center should focus on cost-efficient service that maximizes revenue. Customers are concerned with metrics that affect whether they can receive service when they want it, where they want it, and without worry once they have it. Employees, on the other hand, want performance measures that make sense to them and aren’t designed for burnout.
 
2. Do your existing metrics define and measure progress toward your goals and desired outcomes?
It’s not uncommon for contact centers to measure metrics in terms of “did” or “did not” achieve, meanwhile losing sight of progress along the way. Your metrics shouldn’t just exist to define the finish line. The right performance measures will serve as milestones and indicators of success or failure, which are critical to employee development and coaching conversations.
 
3. Does achieving your current metrics mean that you’ve achieved success?
Is it possible to hit all of your metrics and still fall short of your desired results? This happens in the contact center more often than you may realize. Whether it’s quality scores that don’t equate to customer satisfaction results, average handle time metrics that drive the wrong behaviors, or underestimating the contact center’s strategic value and thus limiting investment, each of your metrics should be leading toward your overall success.
 
4. Are your employees able to impact the metrics for which they’re being held accountable? Can they articulate why each of those metrics matter?
One of the worst things that can happen in any organization is to hold someone responsible for something that they can’t affect. It’s demotivating, counter-productive, and often leads to undesired behaviors and outcomes. If organizations want to see their employees drive success, then their employees should only be held accountable for metrics that they can affect. Additionally, employees should understand why each metric matters, how it’s measured, and the role that they plan in impacting it.
 
At Talkdesk, we understand the importance of measuring the most meaningful contact center metrics, which is why we’ve committed to a 100% Uptime SLA. Click here to learn more and discover how we’re helping contact centers achieve success in 2019.