Employee Satisfaction for FCR Effectiveness Benchmarking Study

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From an employee perspective, this study benchmarks your call center’s FCR business
practices effectiveness, provides insights on reducing repeat calls and awards
call centers that have demonstrated Esat excellence

Why Participate in SQM’s Esat FCR Effectiveness Benchmarking Study


Do you know how satisfied your employees are with your call center’s ability to deliver first call resolution in a consistent manner?

Do you know what repeat call reasons your employees want you to improve on?

Do you know how your call center compares to your industry and world class call centers for key FCR employee satisfaction indicators?

Do you know how satisfied your employees are working in your call center?

Do you know if your FCR employee satisfaction changes by call center or by employment status?

Do you know how to prioritize opportunities for FCR employee satisfaction improvement?

Do you know how your first call resolution performance is impacting your employee satisfaction performance?

Do you know your targeted opportunities for employee satisfaction improvement?

Are you using the right measures to effectively evaluate your employee satisfaction with your FCR business practices?

If you don’t have quality answers to these questions, let the experts at SQM Group assist you in benchmarking your employee satisfaction for your call center’s FCR effectiveness and to provide insights on reducing repeat calls.

Top 5 Reasons to Improve Your First Call Resolution Performance


Reduce operating cost - for the average call center that SQM benchmarks, a 1% improvement in their FCR performance equals $276,000 in operational savings. If you are performing at the call center industry average of 67% first call resolution rate, you need to understand that at least 33% of customers calling your call center have to call back because their inquiry or problem is not resolved on their first call. The cost to the call center is enormous.

Improve customer satisfaction - by having high first call resolution. In fact, every 1% improvement in FCR equals a 1% improvement in call center customer satisfaction. Call center customer satisfaction drops an average of 15% with each repeat call, so the impact repeat calls have on your overall customer satisfaction is enormous.

Increase opportunities to sell - the customer’s inquiry or problem must be resolved before the CSR has earned the right to move onto any sort of sales activity. If the CSR moves to the cross sell too early the customer is irritated and feels the CSR is pushing the organization’s needs, rather than serving the customer.

Reduce customers at risk - customers that are at risk of going to competitors are a result of unresolved customer inquiries or problems and have the biggest impact on the call center’s financial performance. The cost to the organization of customers at risk (as a result of not getting their call resolved) is 5–10 times greater than the operational savings received from improving FCR performance. Most call centers are not aware how much revenue they are losing as a result of the customer’s inquiry or problem going unresolved. SQM’s research shows that if the customer’s call is not resolved in the first call, 40% or more of those customers will not call back. Therefore, the call center has lost the opportunity to resolve those customers’ calls and retain those customers.

Improve employee satisfaction - an organization with low first call resolution often has low employee satisfaction and high turnover. Interestingly, only 10% of employees are satisfied that management focuses on improving FCR! The stress on the employee of taking the second and third call from that customer whose issue wasn’t resolved the first time is huge.

About the Call Center FCR Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking Study


The Call Center FCR Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking Study assesses the call center’s FCR business practices from an employee perspective and provides best business practices for achieving FCR.

It is SQM’s belief that your frontline employees are your best resource for assessing your business practices for achieving FCR.

Benchmarking comparison to your peer industry, call center industry and best call center for employee satisfaction ratings. In addition, our study can compare your call center by position, status and teams.

We benchmark over 250 leading North American call centers on an annual basis and we have been doing this study since 1996.

Join other major organizations that have participated in our Call Center Benchmarking Studies such as Avon, Bristol Myers, Capital One, Discoverfinancial, Exelon Corp, Florida Power, GMAC, Liberty Mutual, Marriott, Safeway, Sears, Staples, US Bank and Wells Fargo.

Based on our Call Center FCR Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking Study data, we work with you to develop meaningful and actionable targeted opportunities for improvement that will protect and maximize one of your company’s greatest assets - your customers!

Call Center FCR Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking Study Methodology


Customizing the Benchmarking Study
Employee surveys are conducted through our website or via email. Our in-depth, 50 questions survey is filled out by up to 100 of your employees. SQM’s employee survey focuses on the call center’s first call resolution performance from CSRs and frontline management’s point of view. SQM has a proven track record for measuring the factors that drive first call resolution and employee satisfaction. The survey can be customized to meet your call center needs.

In order to get the most from our benchmarking study you will be guided on how to select your employees to be surveyed, survey questions for your employees and the frequency of the surveys. For example:

  • If you are looking to understand full and part time employee satisfaction, you will select a sample of employees that is representative of your call center employment status mix.
  • If you want to get a deep understanding of specific call centers, attributes, or positions the survey can be customized to meet your needs.
  • You can determine the frequency of when the benchmarking surveys should be conducted (i.e. quarterly, semiannually, or annually).

Our Call Center FCR Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking Study can be focused on specific areas, such as:

  • Position - Frontline, supervisors, and management
  • Status - Full time and part time positions
  • Center - Call center locations
  • Teams - Teams or departments
  • Educational Level - High school or college

Our Call Center FCR Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking Study can also be focused on specific call types or functions, such as:

  • Inquiries
  • Orders
  • Complaints
  • Dispatching
  • Helpdesk
  • Collections

Operational Performance

In addition to the employee survey, we’ll ask you to complete an operational questionnaire which covers 76 metric areas such as, service levels, cost per call, call volume, abandon rates, labor costs, calls handled and training days.

We will deliver to you a report on how you compare to our database for key operational indicators.

The inclusion of this operational survey gives us a more complete picture of your call center’s overall performance.

Call Center FCR Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking Report Deliverables


A straightforward, but in-depth report delivered to you and your management team outlining your call center’s FCR employee satisfaction performance. This report can be delivered to you within 5 days of completion of your data collection. Typically, the whole project can take as little as 5-10 days from start to finish.

Specifically, the Call Center FCR Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking Study gives you:

  • 100 employee satisfaction surveys
  • 50 employee survey questions focusing on their satisfaction with working in the call center and the call center’s first call resolution performance
  • Employee verbatim comments on their satisfaction with working in the call center and the call center’s first call resolution performance
  • FCR employee satisfaction benchmarking comparison to call center peer group, call center industry and best call center
  • Targeted opportunities for FCR employee satisfaction improvements
  • Best FCR employee satisfaction practices for achieving FCR
  • 1 operational survey
  • 76 operational metric areas benchmarking comparison
  • Entry into SQM Awards Program

* Your front line employees are your best resource for assessing your business practices for achieving FCR. *

What’s Next


1. Call SQM Group at (800) 446-2095 to talk about your objectives for the project.

2. We will walk you through a sample report which will show you clearly what you can expect from the Call Center FCR Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking Study.

3. To get the project started, SQM Group will conduct a pre-survey consultation to walk you through the Call Center FCR Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking Study implementation steps.

Your Investment


The total investment for the Call Center FCR Employee Satisfaction Benchmarking Study is typically $4,000 plus applicable taxes.

Additional employee surveys are $15 per survey.