The services of a call center services provider are extremely important in the current times. Especially when it comes to small- and medium-scale businesses, it is imperative that an outsourcing vendor is chosen who can keep the quality of work high and maintain a level of consistency. But this can only happen if you define Service Level Agreement (SLA) clearly, and your call center services provider is professional enough to deliver the work accordingly.
Critical SLAs/Metrics for Call Center/Contact Center
Although there are many parameters that are deemed essential for maintaining the quality of a call center/contact center, you should be especially careful about the ones mentioned below:
- Average Speed of Answer (ASA): ASA calculates the amount of calls that are not replied to within a certain time limit. If you are the one outsourcing the call center, you need to be very precise in defining this limit. Depending on the type of process and how serious it is from a customer perspective, the ASA should be defined. For example, in a medical process where a number of emergency calls are made, the ASA needs to be lower when compared with an ecommerce process.
- Abandon Rate (AR): This SLA shows the percentage of number of customers who disconnect the call while they are waiting in the queue. It is important to cut down on the time it takes for a customer to reach a human agent. Because if this number goes beyond an acceptable level (the global accepted level is under 8 percent), then the image of your brand will be impacted.
- Agent Talk Time (ATT): As a client, you should always know how much time your outsourced agents are spending while talking to the customers. ATT does not account for time spent in queues, call transfers or hold. Thus, it provides you a clear idea of the actual work done on the call.
- Response Time (RT): It tells you about the time it took for an agent to respond to a call or customer query via email/chat. As most modern-day customers are finicky, they would not stay with you for long if you make them wait for support. So, ensure a low response time by defining it clearly as part of your service level agreement.
- First Call Resolution (FCR): One of the biggest reasons why call centers fail to deliver on clients’ expectations is because they cannot maintain an acceptable FCR. When there is a low FCR, the customers return several times for getting resolution to the same query. It has a double-negative impact. Firstly, the number of calls in queue increase. Secondly, the customers become dissatisfied due to the ineptness shown by call center agents.
Why You Should Show Caution in Defining SLAs?
Just because you have the option to define SLAs, it does not mean that you should get overambitious. Setting up a very high level of expectation can do more bad than good, so always be judicious while laying down the SLAs.
Injudiciously setting up SLA for one process impacts another
If you get greedy and define really high requirements for one SLA than it can have a negative impact on another SLA. For example, if you set up a very low value for ASA, then the agents will be forced to rush while taking their calls. This will have a negative influence on CSAT and FCR.
Gives up a wrong representation of the actual work
Ultimately, SLAs are just numbers and do not always represent the complete picture. Other aspects of your call center services like rapport building, empathy and forging bonds with customers are equally important. So, always maintain a fine balance between numbers and the actual work done.
At Vcare, we understand the value of SLAs and have long-term experience in delivering call center services. We are a call center services provider that has already completed many projects successfully and are ready to take on any challenge.
