Information technology can be a powerful tool or a great burden on a company, and call center reporting applications are no exception. Reporting is important but it's also vital to track the right information. The most important call center metrics for your company may differ from those at another organization, but here are three metrics that are essential for nearly any telephone customer service operation.

First Call Resolution

A study by the Service Quality Measurement (SQM) Group found of all call center metrics, one of the strongest correlations with customer service comes from First Call Resolution (FCR). For example their study showed only 3% of customers who have their complaints resolved on the first call ended up defecting to a competitor, compared to 38% of customers who required two or more calls for resolution. Increasing FCR means lower call volume and lower operating costs. It also means higher employee satisfaction because a customer who is forced to call back is more likely to be hostile.

Low FCR can be an indicator of problems in the customer service system. Agents may not be sufficiently trained, may not have enough authority to resolve simple problems, or there may be software problems that prevent changes from correctly propagating through the system.

Forecasting Accuracy

Ideally call centers are staffed exactly to the number of calls received, but in reality this is difficult to achieve. Call volume fluctuates over the course of the day, week, month and year. When the center is understaffed, agents are stressed by the heavy workload and customers are frustrated by the long hold times. When overstaffed, the company is wasting money on agents who have little to do.

Examining past call center metrics allows managers to see how call traffic changes and staff accordingly. While they may never know why traffic always peaks the Thursday morning after a full moon, at least they can have enough agents on the phones to handle the calls.

Response Time

The longer someone is on hold, the less satisfaction the customer feels. Long hold times make customers feel they aren't important and give them plenty of time to think about switching to a competitor. Slow response times are also bad for your agents, since they are more likely to get customers who are angry over the long wait. When call center metrics show high response time, either the center is understaffed, agents are not handling customers efficiently, or both.

Customer Satisfaction

We said we'd show you three important call center metrics but there is one more that is the most important of all. Just because the above numbers are good doesn't mean your company is doing the job right. Maybe response time is down because agents are abandoning calls before resolving the problem. Maybe FCR is down because customers are taking their business elsewhere rather than calling back a second time. Never get so focused on the numbers you forget the real goal of customer service is customer service.