BOA Release (3 Feb 2021)
Introduction#
Over the past 80 years Contact Center (CC) has become an isolated industry with its own management practice and ethics. As such, CC’s are widely used in any “market verticals” to handle various kinds of customer interactions from sales to service.
One aspect that is common to all CC’s is that they handle a large number of calls. The volumes are so high that CC’s have trained staff that is solely dedicated to handle those calls. Therefore, any CC is notoriously expensive to run.
There are two main KPIs that CC managers strive to ‘optimize’: Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Handling Times (HT). Ultimately, Customer Satisfaction depends on the waiting times (they should be as short as possible) as well as the ability of the CC to address customer enquiries efficiently. Handling Time is a KPI which counts the duration of each call between Customer and Agent. The longer the Average HT, the more agents a CC would need to keep the CSAT levels high. Therefore, it is a form of art to ensure high CSAT whilst keeping Average HT low.