Yaicha

Call center metrics are the source of so very many questions we hear at ICMI. What should be measured, how should you measure, what standards or benchmarks exist for each measure, how do you interpret and act on measured results — all of these and more are issues that trouble many call center professionals at one time or another.

So it should not be surprising that the March 2008 issue of ICMI’s Customer Management Insight (CMI), includes two articles that address call center metrics. Cliff Hurst, of Career Impact, Inc., offers his thoughts in “Identifying the KPI’s that Matter Most” and Fred Van Bennekom, of Great Brook Consulting, provides his own explanations in “Measuring Service Effectiveness.” I know both of them, as well, since they have been speakers at ICMI’s conferences and I respect the experience and judgment that each brings to the table.

It’s interesting, though, that Fred is in his “sweet spot,” since his area of expertise truly is in measurement, particularly statistical measurement, while Cliff is probably best known for his work on quality monitoring. I think this difference shows in the two articles and the approaches each writer takes.

You’ll see in Fred’s a precise organization, where every metric or method gets defined and then has its advantages and then its shortcomings explained in order. He knows in depth what he’s talking about and so can get to the point concisely. I like the graphic he included, too, which again shows the orderly way he has addressed his subject:

The Portfolio of Customer Feedback Research Techniques

What I like about Cliff’s approach, however, is that this material does not come across as routine when he writes about it. He’s got almost an explorer’s mindset as he tackles the challenge of identifying what KPI’s call centers should use — which is the same attitude that call center managers themselves need to have.

He starts off with an analogy about dashboards related to his daughter learning to drive (which any of us with teenagers can relate to), and before he addresses any specific KPI’s at all, he lists five commandments:

1. Don’t be a copycat.
2. Don’t mistake common practices for best practices.
   
3. Find the right balance among KPIs.
4. A well-worn management aphorism goes something like this: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” (he goes on to debunk this one)
5. Remember what Peter Drucker said, “The data itself is not as important as are the trends in the data.”

Read the article to see the explanations that go along with each of those points, but just from the list alone you can see that this article is not just a list of all the KPIs one could use in a call center. In fact, I thought some of the best advice in the article was right there in that list.

Put both of these articles and these experienced professionals’ guidance together, and you’ve got some great insight into call center metrics. I recommend reading both of these articles if call center metrics have any importance to you.

ADDENDUM 3/14/2008:

I ran across another commentary on call center metrics after I originally posted this entry. ICMI’s Kelly Brickley posted “Obtaining Agent Buy-in for Metrics” in the CMI blog, From the Field with ICMI Certified Associates. As Kelly writes, it’s a common challenge for call center managers to get agents to understand why they are being measured the way that they are.

Her advice begins, sensibly, with looking at the KPIs themselves.

At ICMI, we recommend the following individual KPIs: Adherence to schedule and quality. As an agent, I can control whether I’m doing the right things at the right times, or whether I’m logged in when I’m supposed to be. In addition, I have the ability to ensure that the call which I‘m handling right now is conducted with the highest quality.

Kelly’s advice is a good reminder to look hard at the meaning of the casually-tossed-around term, KPI: KEY Performance Indicators. KPI’s are not all the useful measures, nor are they every meaningful or potentially significant measure. They are the “key,” as in “most critical” measures that indicate how well you are performing.

Despite our industry’s fondness for statistical measures of so many dizzying kinds, the idea behind KPI’s is simplicity. Narrow them down, choose them very carefully, monitor them closely, learn what changes in them really mean, and take action where indicated.
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