A call center can help your e-commerce business to flourish. Setting up a clear point of contact and advertising the number to call if your visitors have any questions or just need a little assistance can be the difference between a hit and a miss when it comes to online sales.
But how do you know just how well your e-commerce call center is doing? Analyzing monthly or weekly reports is an important part of measuring your businesses success and that is just as true when it comes to studying your call center metrics. Here is our pick of the key metrics to focus on and avoid being overwhelmed by too much data.
First Call Resolution Rate
This is a fairly simple one to understand and possibly the most important in terms of efficiency. It’s a percentage of all total calls that resulted in a sale which means it’s a reliable source to measure the efficiency and accuracy of your call center staff. If they provide all the necessary information and assistance to your customers then this percentage should always be high.
Customer Satisfaction
This metric should be self-explanatory but its importance cannot be overstated. Leaving your customers happy with your service is worth its weight in gold and should be prioritized over acquiring new customers. A happy service user is worth far more to your business than 10 new leads would be. When outsourcing to a call center you want to make sure your customers are in good hands and so sending out feedback requests and market research should be mandatory. It can help you improve your products and offers as well as providing valuable insight into the level of your support.
Average Order Value (AOV)
Not strictly applicable to call centers this is a metric that is used to measure a business’s success in all fields but can easily be applied to the call center metrics. By having a great team supporting and looking after your customers’ order process they should know your products well enough in order to upsell and you should observe a marked increase in AOV when outsourcing to a call center. If you don’t you should question them on why not.
Repeat Customer Rate (RCR)
Another metric that is universal but very easily tracked through your call center metrics. These are the customers that left happy and came back for more and their numbers/accounts should be flagged up on your call center metrics. The higher your RCR the better you are doing and if you see a drop you should investigate.
Cost Per Contact
This is basic economics, its how much you are paying out in hiring an e-commerce call center versus how much contact is made through that channel. If it turns out that your customers are just using the website and calls are few and far between, then consider downscaling; if however, you are receiving more than you can realistically handle then you need to upscale.
Service Level
This is the metric to easily identify the need to upscale. A good level for this would be 80% of calls answered within 20 seconds. If you are not meeting that target then you need more hands-on phones.
Average Call Handle Time
Before you can really consider downscaling or upscaling your call center contract you should first make sure that the call handling time metric is checked and that the team has been trained to efficiently handle the workload. By training the staff you already have assigned, service level and cost per contact will both improve.
These are in our opinion the 7 most important e-commerce call center metrics to consider and a specific focus for us as a business. If you have any suggestions or comments please don’t hesitate to get in touch.