In this blog, we’ll provide tips on how to effectively benchmark your contact center for future success.

Why benchmark your contact center?

Benchmarking your contact center is essential for several reasons. First, it helps you to gain clarity to better understand how your contact center is performing compared to your industry peers and overall best practices. By benchmarking, you can identify areas for improvement and implement changes to boost your team’s performance. It also can help you to set realistic goals for your contact center and measure your progress towards achieving them. Finally, benchmarking allows you to gain insights into customer needs and expectations, enabling you to tailor your services for a better customer experience. 

Tip 1: Define your contact center metrics

Before you can benchmark your contact center, you need to define the metrics you will use to measure its performance. The metrics you choose should align with your business objectives and reflect the goals you want to achieve. Some common metrics include:

• Average Speed of Answer (ASA): This is the average time it takes for a customer to connect with an agent.
• First Call Resolution (FCR): This is the percentage of calls that are resolved on the first interaction.
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): This is the percentage of customers who rate their experience with your contact center as satisfactory.
• Abandonment Rate: This is the percentage of customers who hang up before connecting with an agent.
• Average Handle Time (AHT): This is the average time an agent spends on an interaction.

Once you have defined your metrics, you can start tracking them and benchmarking them against industry standards.

Tip 2: Choose Your Benchmarks

To benchmark your contact center, you need to compare your metrics to industry standards and best practices. You can gather benchmark data from a variety of sources, including industry reports, peer groups, and third-party providers. Some common benchmarks for contact centers include:

• Industry benchmarks: These are benchmarks based on data from contact centers across your industry. You can find industry benchmarks in industry reports and surveys.
• Internal benchmarks: These are benchmarks based on your contact center’s historical performance. By comparing your current performance to your past performance, you can identify areas for improvement.
• Peer benchmarks: These are benchmarks based on the performance of other contact centers similar to yours. You can gather peer benchmark data through industry associations or by networking with other contact center managers.
• Best practice benchmarks: These are benchmarks based on the performance of the best-performing contact centers in your industry. You can gather best practice benchmark data through industry awards and recognition programs.

Tip 3: Monitor your performance

To effectively benchmark your contact center, you need to regularly monitor your performance. This involves tracking your metrics over time and comparing them to your chosen benchmarks. You can use dashboards and reporting tools to monitor your metrics and identify trends and patterns. By monitoring your performance regularly, you can identify areas for improvement and implement changes that improve your team’s performance.

Tip 4: Identify areas for improvement

Benchmarking your contact center is not just about measuring performance – it’s also about identifying areas for improvement. By defining and comparing your baseline standards, you can identify areas where your contact center is underperforming and implement changes to address these areas and improve performance. Some common areas for improvement include:

• Agent training: Providing agents with the right training can improve their skills and help them to provide better service to your customers. This can improve metrics such as first-call resolution and customer satisfaction.
• Technology: The right technology can help your contact center to operate more efficiently and effectively. For example, a cloud-based omnichannel contact center solution can enable remote work and provide access to advanced analytics and reporting tools.
• Process improvement: By streamlining your processes and reducing unnecessary steps, you can improve metrics such as average handle time and speed of answer.
• Customer experience: Improving the overall customer experience can lead to higher customer satisfaction and lower abandonment rates.

 Tip 5: Implement changes and measure results

Once you have identified areas for improvement, it’s time to implement changes and measure the results. This involves developing a plan for implementing changes, communicating the changes to your team, and monitoring the impact on your metrics. It’s essential to involve your team throughout the benchmarking process and then to provide them with the training and resources they need to succeed. 

Improve performance and the customer experience

Benchmarking your contact center is essential for improving performance and providing better customer service. By defining your metrics, choosing your benchmarks, monitoring your performance, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing changes, you can achieve better results to meet your business objectives.

Not sure where to start? Let Inoria guide you through the benchmarking process. Contact Inoria to find out more.