Call Center
Top 5 Operating Practices that Hinder Agents from Achieving First Call Resolution

Operating Practices that Hinder FCR

SQM's Voice of the Customer (VoC) research shows that 71% of calls are resolved on the first call for the average call center, which means 29% of customers have to call back because their issue was not resolved on the first call. Additionally, of the 500 leading North American call centers SQM benchmarks annually, only 5% of them are at the world-class First Call Resolution (FCR) performance level of 80% or higher.

Based on SQM's Agent Satisfaction with operating practices (e.g., people, processes, and technology) research study of 150 leading North American call centers, figure 1 shows the top 5 operating practices that hinder Agents from achieving FCR. These FCR operating practices are ranked based on having the lowest Agent satisfaction (i.e., very satisfied top box response). Based on Agent satisfaction feedback, the top 5 FCR operating practices that hinder Agents from achieving FCR and tips for improving each area are described below.

FCR Issues are Not Fixed in a Timely Manner

The number one issue that hinders Agents is 'FCR issues are not fixed in a timely manner.' It has been SQM's experience that, for many call centers, there is no sense of urgency to fix FCR issues that the call center does not control. Non-call center departments represent the highest source of error areas for not achieving FCR and the main reason why FCR issues are not fixed quickly. Therefore, the call center budget needs to include allocating financial resources for cross-functional process improvement teams that address FCR issues that need to be fixed. SQM highly recommends that call centers invest more resources in a process improvement team (e.g., IDCA) to identify, develop, check and act on solutions for fixing FCR issues in a timely manner. The bottom line is that call center budgets need to include allocating financial resources for cross-functional process improvement teams that address FCR issues that need to be fixed.

Other Departments are Not Supportive of FCR

The number three issue that hinders Agents is 'other departments are not supportive of FCR.' Many Agents feel that different departments such as claims, billing, technical, and marketing do not properly support FCR. Agents feel that they cannot access support department personnel directly to discuss the customer's issue and determine a solution in real-time. Many Agents also feel that the personnel from other support departments look down upon them, making them feel like they are not essential employees to the organization. Agents hear about product, service, and technology issues, but, in most cases, they have no place to document or provide recommendations to improve or eliminate these issues. Most organizational leaders view FCR as a metric that is only applicable to call centers. However, a small but growing number of organizations have included the FCR metric for enterprise-wide accountability at all levels (e.g., CEO and down) to ensure a better CX. Or put differently, FCR is used as a metric that all employees are accountable to in order to create alignment for what customers experience doing business with the organization for all contact channels.

Quality Assurance Does Not Help Agents Deliver FCR

The number five issue that hinders Agents is 'QA does not help Agents deliver FCR’. Many call center managers believe their quality assurance (QA) program improves their First Call Resolution (FCR) and CX. Furthermore, for most organizations, the primary objective of their QA program is to improve FCR and CX, yet, very few call centers can substantiate improvements as a result of their traditional QA practices. With traditional QA, a supervisor or QA evaluator listens to the calls and evaluates the CX. Regardless of the metrics used or the person who conducts the QA evaluation, what remains clear is that a call center employee is judging the CX for resolving an inquiry or problem, not the customer. Conversely, Customer Quality Assurance (CQA) combines call compliance metrics, judged by a QA evaluator, and service quality metrics, judged by a customer via a post-call or email customer survey. CQA is based on the premise of letting the customer be the judge of their own experience when contacting an organization and is one of the best practices for driving improvements in the FCR rate.