Contact centers are taking a lead role in the overall banking experience. Overall banking experience is changing for most of the members. Walking into a credit union branch is becoming a rare occurrence. Also, the role of the contact centers is changing from informational and troubleshooting to sales and purchase-related activities. This is leading to contact centers having higher sales conversion ratios compared to branches. Therefore, it is important to have a close watch on the KPIs to track the performance.

Here are the ten most important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that should be regularly tracked for efficient working of the contact center.

 1.  Percentage of Calls Blocked

 It is a first and foremost indicator that helps a particular contact center to monitor the number of calls that could not be handled by a company. These are those calls, which occur when a customer can’t interact with a customer service representative. As a result, the calls get blocked and the customer, when calls, either receives a busy tone or are routed directly to the voicemail.

 This problem arises either because there are not enough agents to handle the inbound calls or the contact center technology is not equipped enough to handle the volume of calls.

 Regularly monitoring this KPI should not be ignored, as ignoring it would lead to a missed opportunity to connect with the customers, which at the end, can’t be afforded by any contact center.

 2.  Average Time in Queue

No customer wants to waste his precious hours waiting in long queues. Be it any ordinary service shop or a contact center, every customer wants to be attended quickly.

A contact center, thus, needs to ensure that it completely satisfies its customers within an acceptable waiting time.

This KPI is measured as the total time callers wait in the queues divided by the total number of calls answered by the agents. This indicator should be regularly monitored in order to know, whether your contact center is providing its callers with the services they deserve. 

 3.  Average abandonment rate

An abandoned call is a call, which is hung up by the callers even before they reach the agents.  The main reason of call abandonment might be that either the customer has reached a certain limit of their waiting time or they are getting confused by the IVR, hitting too many wrong numbers.

In order to retain their customers, a contact center should make sure that this abandonment rate remains below a targeted threshold. Higher call abandonment rate may shift the interests of the customers towards the competitors, which in turn will act as a warning sign for the contact center.

 4. Service Level 

Every contact center provides its customers with a Service Level Agreement (SLA). An SLA is a contact center’s promise to its customers and clients, of maintaining a certain standard of service. This agreement includes a certain target that should be reached by the customer service.

 Service Level measures how often the customer service teams meet up this target – for instance, 80% of all calls answered in 30 seconds or less.

Service level is calculated as  [Number of calls answered within the service level threshold] / [Number of calls offered] * 100. A high value of service level indicates a high degree of customer satisfaction. It is important to frequently monitor this KPI, in order to get a baseline for future improvement.

 5.  First Call Resolution

 A customer is highly satisfied if his issues get resolved in a short span of time. In order to keep its customers satisfied, a contact center needs to regularly monitor, how well and in how much time customer issues are being resolved.

 First call resolution is the KPI that measures the efficiency of a particular contact center in solving the customer queries without creating a need to transfer, escalate or returning the calls. Issues being resolved at the first call indicates a significant level of customer satisfaction and contact center efficiency.

 6.  Average calls per members after resolution

 It’s true that the callers prefer to save their time by getting their issues solved as soon as possible. The contact center staff should be trained to to help the callers not only with their immediate problem but also anticipate the follow-on issues that a member may come across. E.g. when a member is requesting an address change then Contact Center should be able to ask if they would also like a new set of checkbooks. Avoiding the follow-on calls may save them valuable time, thereby, increasing overall customer satisfaction.

 Contact centers, that’s why should monitor that what are average calls each member makes even after the issue is resolved to see if it associated with any downstream process. Lower this rate would be, more a customer will be satisfied.

 7.  Revenue Growth

 This is the indicator that measures the total amount of revenue gained with each successful call that is completed. Generally, a target revenue is set up, for example, $45 per call. The contact centers should constantly monitor their performance in order to achieve this set target.

 8.  Occupancy Rate

 In order to estimate the productivity of their agents, contact center managers need to regularly monitor the occupancy rate. Occupancy Rate refers to the indicator that measures the amount of time that the agents are on call as well as completing the work associated with the calls.

 Generally, there is no standard set for occupancy rate, but by maintaining a lower occupancy, you may require more number of agents, thereby increasing your operational costs. Also, if you maintain a higher occupancy you may overexert your agents resulting in higher and faster turnover. Hence, the occupancy rate set up should be such that it achieves higher customer satisfaction while keeping costs down.

 9.  Employee Churn

 One of the main indicators that should be tracked overtime is employee churn or employee turnover rate. This is the percentage of employees who leave the contact centers to work elsewhere.

 Employee churn can be positive or negative. If a poor performer is terminated, it will positively impact the working of the contact center, whereas if a good performer or a key person of an organization leaves voluntarily,  it may negatively impact the contact center.

 Thus, Employee Churn Rate significantly impacts customer satisfaction, call center schedule and team morale.

 10.  Net Promoter Score (NPS)

 NPS is a commonly used tool for assessing customer loyalty towards the credit union. NPS is calculated based on a simple question asked by the credit unions to its customers  – “How likely is it that you would recommend that credit union to a friend or colleague?” The answer is ranked on a scale of 0-10, 0 being an unlikely score and 10 being a likely score.

 These scores are divided into three categories, 0-6 being Detractors i.e. the customers who are unhappy with a brand, 7-8 Passives, satisfied but unenthusiastic customers and 9-10 Promoters, loyal, satisfied and enthusiastic customers. NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage difference between the Promoters and Detractors.

 A good NPS increases the goodwill of the credit union. As contact center interacts with millions of customers over the year, with each interaction there is an opportunity to increase or decrease the NPS. Hence, contact centers have an important role in shaping up the NPS of the credit union.

CONCLUSION

Every credit union’s success is determined by its capability to meet the growing demands of customers. Contact centers being the intermediate between the credit unions and its customers, need to timely assess these KPI’s and ensure that they are serving their customers well by selling new services, driving down operating costs, and generating more revenue through customer loyalty.  

These KPIs define the direction of services provided by the contact centers of your credit union and enables you to take the immediate actions towards maintaining the set targets.