Ever pondered the phrase ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’? When it comes to managing calling productivity in a contact centre or busy sales office then it’s got to be the most precious rule any manager can learn.
"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it!"
All successful call centres use key performance indicators (KPIs). Once you identify what KPIs you need to measure your team, managing the productivity of your team members becomes a whole lot easier.
A wise man once told me, to "start from the goal and work back". What’s the output of your team and how many do you need per day? If you're setting new business appointments then start with how many appointments you require per rep, per day to make it work. Go even further back for a second, how many appointments do you need to facilitate your field sales staff with enough qualified leads so they can hit their quota for the month?
Setting outbound calling KPIs is as much a process as it is a numbers game. Calculate the outputs required per agent on the phones per day and work it back in terms of the required activity and hey presto you’ll know what they need to achieve each day to make your business grow.
Once you’ve found your winning formula, share it with your team. You’ll be surprised how more productive people can be if they know the management KPIs.
Ok, there’s the background to this article, you’ll be glad to hear this isn’t a ‘grow your business’ lesson, this article is about knowing what calling activity to monitor to ensure you can manage the productivity of your team.
You can overcook KPIs, try to keep them to a minimum or you’ll struggle to interpret them on a daily basis. KPIs need to be meaningful and easily obtainable, so do your groundwork and explore which measures work for you and your business, then find a call reporting software platform that allows you to get hold of the information easily.
Top Outbound Calling KPIs
- Total Call Attempts - Quality over quantity? Measure the made by the user, in a B2C environment you may need a higher volume of outbound call attempts to get the small number of conversions you need
- Connected Calls - Most businesses omit the call attempts and concentrate on the calls that connected, i.e. the calls that were answered. This is the sanity, rather than the vanity figure
- Total Talk Time - Measure this one daily and weekly. You should see a pattern of what is an acceptable level of talk time in your business per day/shift. If you measure each user side by side in a table, then you’ll quickly be able to identify poor performers
- Average Talk Time - The sign of a good quality call is typically the call length, finding your winning average talk time is a great management tool and a sound target for outbound staff
- Dialled Numbers - A good call reporting programme will help you detect duplicate numbers being dialled frequently or in sequence
- Call Outcome Codes (disposition codes) - Also known as call results, outcome codes allow staff to tag the call with a specific code which indicates the outcome of a call. View this statistic in real-time and in your historical reports - very powerful and great for creating healthy competition amongst teams
Now you know what to measure, read our Call Reporting & Analytics Buyer’s Guide or read our latest call reporting software reviews.
