Measuring call center performance has evolved: in addition to the historical quantitative and qualitative indicators, new indicators are now available to assess the effectiveness of customer service and customer knowledge, which has become the "Holy Grail" for brands.
Interview with Anne Laratte, Managing Director and Co-founder of Vivetican outsourcer based in Madagascar for 18 years, which handles customer relations for major brands such as Rue Du Commerce, Delamaison.fr, Le Parisien, Bouygues and Digitick.
What indicators does Vivetic track to measure customer relations performance?
We track "classic" indices such as Quality of Service (QS), X-second pick-up rate, Average Waiting Time (AWT) and Average Handling Time (AHT). But while they are essential, they are no longer sufficient on their own. Our customers rightly consider that these indicators are basic, taken-for-granted, and do not provide a comprehensive measure of the customer experience.
As the telephone remains the channel of choice for consumers, our role as the interface between customer and brand is not only to meet their expectations, but also to capture any relevant information that can help improve customer satisfaction by optimizing and simplifying processes, whether in our own organization or in the brand's own.
In addition, we use customer-oriented indicators such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure customer satisfaction and the likelihood of recommending the brand to friends and family. We also measure the First Call Resolution Rate (FCR) and the Repeat Call Rate, two indicators that enable us to analyze the level of effort expended by the customer and the effectiveness of customer service in meeting their needs. Our customers are particularly sensitive to these two indicators, since their performance is also synonymous with budget control for marketing departments.
As each company has its own specific DNA and unique organization, we work with our customers to define the most relevant indicators. And we develop them, as well as the processes, if necessary.
How do you work with your customers to refine the indicators?
We work with them in a spirit of partnership and transparency, sharing our success stories with them. We combine people and technology at the heart of their project. We study the company's organization and issues to identify the indicators that will enable them to better monitor their customer service. Monthly committees are essential for sharing findings and reorienting processes.
Internally, our managers are challenged on a daily basis to come up with constructive proposals and innovations. To give you an example, we asked Rue Du Commerce to collect and analyze customer feedback. The Operations Department immediately saw the benefits for the brand and its teams of better customer knowledge.
Our expertise has shown that, to be relevant and effective, the indicators we measure must be backed up by a high-performance, customer-oriented organization. We recently rethought and enriched our organization by introducing a new function for each customer project: "business support". This employee supports the customer advisors and is the point of entry and validation for escalations to the brand's internal department. The results are edifying: a 91% reduction in escalations, and improved customer service efficiency.
We also place great emphasis on skills management. Each manager and consultant is certified as part of a personalized skills management program. Skills assessment is carried out in real time via an online application, with systematic validation of prior learning. For email processing, we have developed an automatic email correction tool, which is also a pedagogical tool. The results of this organization speak for themselves: the effectiveness of initial training is 91%, and our turnover rate is only 3%.
More than just performance indicators, customer service efficiency is based on a tailor-made ecosystem combining human skills, technology, process relevance, innovation and evolution.
