Imagine a perfect month in your call center:

• Your agents work on the assembly line handling incoming calls.
• Your customers are happy and your NPS is high.
• Your stakeholders are happy with your quarterly results and the fact that you are meeting your goals.
• You have more than enough people to handle the number of calls.
• Staff turnover in your call center is unprecedentedly low.

That sounds like every call center manager’s wet dream right?

We have good news for you: if you try a little hard, you can make this a reality. You just have to be good at monitoring your call center performance.

Call center performance monitoring: what should you measure?

Performance & engagement of your agents

Your agents’ engagement shows how your agents are performing. When you go to evaluate your agents’ performance, you want to assess the following:

• Attendance and punctuality
• Completing and attending training courses
• Teamwork
• Initiative
• Constant progress towards goals and KPIs

Keep track of your agents’ performance through monthly evaluations. Software like Steam-connect can also tell you a little more about their call quality, but more on that later!

Employee engagement shows how mentally engaged your agents are to their work, their colleagues and the organization.

A committed agent is present, wants to keep getting better and is willing to grow with the company.

On the contrary, an agent who is not involved will take longer breaks or be reluctant to pick up the phone. These agents are also not as receptive to feedback and are mentally somewhere else.

The engagement of your agents is closely related to the performance of your call center and thus to the satisfaction of your customers.

Your service affects your customer satisfaction

Do you regularly get angry customers on the phone and are your NPS and CSAT scores to be ashamed of?

That’s just one more indicator of a poor call center and poorly performing agents.

You can improve this by listening in on conversations. Pay particular attention to:

• The tone of voice.
• Adherence to the script.
• The resolution time.

The KPIs above show how an agent is performing, but how do you measure the performance of your entire call center?

Customer satisfaction is a great place to start.

The speed and efficiency of your service

Long waits may indicate an uninvolved agent, but the problem is often just a bit more complicated.

Therefore, speed and effectiveness of service are strong performance indicators for your call center.

Thus, low CSAT scores are not always a symptom of poor performance by your agents.

After all, it may well be that your call center is not as efficient due to workforce issues or that your agents lack some training, causing your wait times and abandonment rates to rise.

Monitoring your call center performance: 5 steps

1. Set goals and hang KPIs on them.

We all know that your call center can be a hectic place. New agents, constant training, challenging call volumes and new technology are all part of an average day.

As a red line in that chaos, you as a call center manager need clear, measurable goals with clear benefits. Why?

Setting goals for your contact center will help you:

• Increase the engagement of your agents.
• Getting the noses of stakeholders, agents, managers and the board in the same direction.
• Enable performance measurement.

Goals should align with your KPIs, such as first contact resolution (FCR), average resolution time, NPS and customer satisfaction.

So in practice that means you can have such goals:

• Improve FCR by 20% in Q4.
• Reduce the number of negative comments on social media by 10% next month.
• Ensure agents score 80% or higher on technical training evaluations this week.

And if you don’t meet those goals? At least then you know where you stand.

2. Determine your budget and responsibilities

How many hours do you want to devote to achieving your goals?

You will need to budget appropriately and take into account salary increases, salaries for supervisors and agents, and your responsibilities as a manager.

One way to monitor your performance is to see how your goals are aligned with your budget. Are your resources being used well?

3. Determine how often you will review performance

How will you plan your performance tracking? Are you going to report every week?

• Or every month?
• Or quarterly?
• Or per year?

Schedule follow-up meetings and make sure your performance tracking is transparent to your agents.

It is also wise to hold a quarterly meeting where you keep your stakeholders informed.

4. Make use of technology

Of course you can create reports in Excel or in MS BI, but in practice that means you have to be a data analyst in addition to being a call center manager.

And who’s in the mood for that?

Fortunately, there are software packages on the market today that not only give your agents all the tools they need, but also provide you with the best dashboards.

With Steam-connect, you’re always on top of things – if you want to be. Monitor the performance of your call center 24/7, listen in on agents and provide them with feedback. You can even adjust them in real time if needed.

Our software puts all your call quality data – like resolution time, wait times, and more – into smart reports to help you track your call center’s performance and improve your business strategy.

Also, be sure to keep your agents informed of progress and consider hanging a report in your call center.

Keep reports on agent performance private, of course, unless you want to put a successful agent in the spotlight!