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Contact Center Customer Experience Studies

Since 1996, SQM’s voice of customer research has been viewed as the gold standard for measuring, benchmarking, tracking, and improving contact center (also known as touchpoints) customer satisfaction and first call resolution. As a result, call centers that have demonstrated superior first call resolution and customer satisfaction are awarded a coveted SQM Call Center Customer Experience Excellence Award.

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Call Center Customer Experience Studies

The contact center industry views SQM as being the thought leader and the gold standard for measuring, benchmarking, and improving contact center customer experience and first contact resolution.  We conduct voice of the customer research for all major contact channels (e.g., call center, IVR self-service, email, web self-service, chat, and mobile self-service). A random sample of post-contact customer experience surveys is conducted with customers who have had a transaction with your contact channel within 1 business day of their interaction. SQM’s post-contact customer experience survey has a proven track record for measuring the attributes that accurately assess and benchmark your CX Greatness, OCR, FCR, Csat, NPS®, and Persona Communication Styles performance. One of the key strengths of our survey process is that we use open-ended customer feedback and a proprietary repeat contact tagging system to identify opportunities for reducing repeat calls or contacts.

Benchmark First Call Resolution and Customer Satisfaction Study

A one-time study that takes 2-3 weeks to complete. The post-contact customer experience surveys are conducted by SQM’s in-house Telephone Survey Representatives that take approximately 5 minutes to complete. SQM benchmarks your contact centers’ customer experience delivery against the performance of over 500 leading North American contact centers.

We use a standardized approach for measuring First Call Resolution with all FCR benchmarking participants. Our standardized FCR measurement practice is considered the gold standard for measuring FCR consistently and accurately.

Benchmarking Report

This FCR benchmarking study provides a 50-page benchmarking report that will be delivered to you and your management team via onsite visit or video conference consultation with a senior SQM consultant outlining your contact channel’s CX Greatness, OCR, FCR, Csat, NPS®, NRI, emotional experience, operational performance, and opportunities for reducing repeat contacts. SQM will review your contact channel operations, conduct focus groups, and provide targeted and individualized recommendations to improve your contact channel performance.

A bar chart comparing industry averages. A call center support person is in the corner left.

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Track First Call Resolution and Customer Satisfaction Study

Ongoing tracking study that is based on conducting post-call surveys on a daily or weekly basis. Surveys can be conducted using any of our survey options (e.g., phone, IVR, and email). Customer feedback notification is sent to you in real-time through mySQM™ Customer Service QA software and can be accessed through a mobile device, tablet, or desktop device. SQM’s tracking study also qualifies your agents and Supervisors to become eligible to be certified as world-class customer experience providers.

Tracking Report

This FCR tracking study provides a formal quarterly report that will be delivered to you and your management team via a conference call with a senior SQM consultant outlining your contact channel’s CX Greatness, OCR, FCR, Csat, operational performance, and opportunities for reducing repeat contacts. Real-time access to your customer survey information is available to all staff levels in a secure encrypted manner through mySQM™ Customer Service QA software.

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How to Improve First Call Resolution and Customer Service?

To help contact centers improve FCR and customer service, we use a VoC closed-loop (e.g., identify, develop, check and act) improvement cycle that focuses on improving a contact center's people, processes, and technology practices. The VoC closed-loop IDCA process is based on SQM's proprietary call tagging system to identify the reasons why customers had to make repeat calls to resolve their issues. Calls are tagged based on post-call customer survey non-FCR feedback. Furthermore, agent feedback and contact center operational review is also used to supplement the post-call survey FCR findings.

The VoC closed-loop IDCA improvement cycle process team is comprised of SQM consultants and key call center personnel (e.g., agents, QA evaluators, and managers). The VoC closed-loop IDCA improvement cycle for improving FCR and customer service performance consists of:

  1. 1. Identify repeat call reasons to improve and analyze
  2. 2. Develop a solution and implement a test pilot to improve specific unresolved call-type performance
  3. 3. Check to see whether or not the test pilot was successful
  4. 4. Act to implement a standardized improvement plan to roll out to the entire call center to improve repeat call reason performance

VoC Closed-Loop IDCA Improvement Cycle

customer feedback loop

Free Software Demo

SQM's Call Center Customer Experience Study will provide the following:

High-level and detailed contact center CX Greatness, OCR, FCR, NPS, NRI, and Csat ratings.
Benchmarking comparison to industry peers, average, and World Class North American contact centers.
FCR - Identify, Develop, Check, and Act (IDCA) Improvement Cycle.
Unresolved contacts' impact on operating cost.
Analyst and manager training for measuring and managing FCR.
Targeted opportunities for reducing repeat contacts and improving customer satisfaction.
Best practices for improving your contact center's CX Greatness, OCR, and FCR performance.
Entry into SQM’s Customer Experience Awards Program.
Data collection on failure reasons for other channels' usage.
Full-text reports of customer verbatim.
Full coding of customer verbatim survey feedback.
Ability to manage quota at a agent level, providing personal accountability to the Voice of the Customer.
Agents and Supervisors are eligible to be certified as world-class customer experience providers.
Tracking and trending KPI performance from the agent to the senior vice president level of the contact center.
Conducting post-call surveys on a daily or weekly basis. Surveys options (e.g., phone, IVR, and email).
Real-time notifications of customer dissatisfaction (Action Alerts) and ability to track service recovery.
Ability to link QA to customer surveys.
Ability to capture and report coaching actions.
Real-time web based reporting, pre-formatted reports and sophisticated database analytical tool​s.

All tracking study data is captured, analyzed, and reported using mySQM™ Customer Service QA software.