practice’s effectiveness, provides insights on reducing repeat calls and certifies
call centers that have achieved World Class Esat FCR Effectiveness
For the average call center SQM benchmarks, only 48% of total calls are ‘one and done’ call resolution. This means for the average call center, 52% of total calls handled by CSRs are for customers who are calling 2 or more times to resolve their call. The opportunity to improve the call center’s ‘one and done’ call resolution performance is enormous and, in most cases, is the greatest opportunity for the call center to improve its Esat, Csat, operating cost and its ability to help retain customers for the organization. Also, SQM’s research shows that for each additional call, customer satisfaction drops by 15%. In addition, employee satisfaction is negatively impacted when CSRs handle too many calls from customers who have called in 2 or more times to resolve their call.
It has been SQM’s experience that CSRs who handle the customer’s call are one of the best sources for feedback about improving your FCR performance. This study tracks your call center’s FCR business practices’ effectiveness and provides insights on reducing repeat calls. This is acheived by CSRs completing an online survey that takes approximately 3 minutes and consists of 6 questions. Workforce scheduling is not required because the survey is so short. By tracking your FCR effectiveness on a weekly or monthly basis you receive additional insights that you would not have if you surveyed CSRs on a annual basis, or longer.
Why Participate in SQM’s Esat for FCR Effectiveness Tracking Study
Do you know…
- how satisfied your employees are with your call center’s ability to deliver first call resolution in a consistent manner?
- how satisfied your employees are with your call center’s FCR effectiveness on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis?
- how to determine if your call center is performing at the world class FCR Esat performance level for certification?
- what repeat call reasons your employees want you to improve on?
- how your call center compares to your industry and world class call centers for key FCR employee satisfaction indicators?
- how satisfied your employees are working in your call center?
- if your FCR employee satisfaction changes by call center or by employment status?
- how to prioritize opportunities for FCR employee satisfaction improvement?
- how your first call resolution performance is impacting your employee satisfaction performance?
- your targeted opportunities for employee satisfaction improvement?
- if you are 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 tracking your employee satisfaction for your call center’s FCR effectiveness and provide insights on reducing repeat calls.
|
All tracking participants are eligible for SQM’s World Class Certification for FCR Esat Click here to learn more about SQM certification 
|
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.
How it Works
Clients send SQM a master list of all CSRs each month in a standardized format which includes CSR identification, email address, supervisor name and, if applicable, when CSRs left the CSR job.
SQM randomly selects CSRs and supervisors for surveying each month, ensuring an equal proportion of employees are selected each month.
Employees complete SQM’s online or IVR FCR Esat survey. The FCR Esat survey takes approximately 3 minutes to complete and consists of 6 questions; additional questions may be added. The FCR Esat survey is offered in different languages (i.e., French, Spanish).
CSRs are invited to complete an FCR Esat survey by either an email invitation or by an administrator (i.e., not a supervisor) asking them to complete the FCR Esat survey.
Employees are invited or informed at the beginning of the month and have up to 30 days to complete the survey at a convenient time for the CSRs and the call center. After the initial survey invitation, employees are sent 2 email reminders to complete the FCR Esat survey.
Workforce management is not required to schedule CSRs to complete the survey because the FCR Esat survey is only 3 minutes in length.
The aggregate survey results are accessible in real-time through SQM’s secure web portal. This reporting system gives you the ability to report, analyze and sort data by employee demographic info (e.g., skill set, position, age, tenure, LOB, location, education, gender).
SQM’s web portal provides information on which CSRs and supervisors have completed the FCR Esat survey.
In addition, SQM can provide your call center with benchmark comparisons and quarterly in-depth reporting.
Reporting
Paper Report
A 20 page Employee Satisfaction FCR Effectiveness tracking report will be emailed to you each quarter. A senior SQM consultant will contact you and your team to discuss the quarterly report.
Specifically, SQM’s Employee Satisfaction FCR Effectiveness tracking report will provide the following:
- Trending performance (i.e., monthly, quarterly and annually) for Esat with working in the call center, East with FCR business practices and CSR loyalty
- Benchmarking comparison to over 450 leading North American call centers
- Benchmarking comparison to peer group, call center industry and world class call center
- High level Esat ratings and detailed feedback about FCR problems and solutions to improve FCR
- Targeted opportunities for reducing repeat calls
- Best practices for reducing repeat calls
- Entry into SQM’s Service Quality Excellence Awards and Certification Program
mySQM™ Reporting
Our mySQM™ reporting tool is designed to allow our clients real-time access to their employee survey information from the convenience of their desktop in a secure encrypted and confidential manner. Our mySQM™ reporting tool provides meaningful information on employee survey feedback. For example, a dashboard report is available for key metrics such as Esat with working in the call center, Esat with FCR business practices and CSR loyalty. Trending reports are available for all metrics. Clients can use our mySQM™ reporting tool text analytic feature to data mine employee feedback comments for key words or trends. Another feature of our mySQM™ reporting tool includes powerful reporting capabilities that can be used for determining repeat call reasons. Our mySQM™ reporting tool is under continual development to ensure that it meets the needs of our clients and that it is the best call center service quality reporting tool in the call center industry.
What’s Next
1. Call SQM Group at (800) 446-2095 to talk about your objectives for the Esat for FCR Effectiveness Tracking Study.
2. SQM will schedule a time to walk you through an online presentation which will show you clearly what you can expect from SQM’s Esat for FCR Effectiveness Tracking Study.
Your Investment
SQM’s FCR for Esat Effectiveness survey conducted by an online or IVR survey for organizations with:
- 1 to 2000 employees, the cost per survey is $3.00
- 2001 to 5000 employees, the cost per survey is $2.00
- 5000 plus employees, the cost per survey is $1.00
Pricing note: There is a $2,500 set up cost for new clients. For each additional survey question there is a 25 cent charge. There is also a $750 charge for quarterly reporting.
