What is One Contact Resolution?
SQM introduces One Contact Resolution (OCR) to the Contact Center Industry
Mike Desmarais,
Founder and CEO, SQM Group
Recently, I hosted a 30-minute webinar to introduce a new metric to the industry, One Contact Resolution (OCR). It was our highest ever attended webinar so I am thrilled with the industry’s early reception to our new metric.
What is One Contact Resolution?
OCR is defined as the percentage of customers who resolved their inquiry or problem on their first contact and did not use another contact channel prior to, or after, using the contact center. A simple way to think about this is ‘one contact – one channel.’
To our knowledge, SQM is the only company that measures OCR using the voice of the customer and we are bringing important thought leadership to the industry. I invite you to listen to our recording on measuring, managing and improving OCR.
In the webinar, I covered the following topics:
- Customer expectations when they contact an organization
- How to define and measure OCR
- The benefits of using the OCR metric
- The differences between OCR and FCR
- Who should own the OCR metric
- The number of contact channels customers really use to resolve the same inquiry
- OCR and FCR performance rating differences
- Customer satisfaction impact when two channels are used
- The business case for measuring OCR
Following the webinar we had some great questions from the audience:
Essential to the accuracy of the customer survey is the fact that the survey is conducted on a random sampling basis and also within one day of the customer’s experience. These two elements are critical to the SQM methodology for surveying for the following reasons:
- A random sample of calls ensures that the sample is representative of the contact center's call volume and thus the KPI's such as OCR, FCR, and Csat, are an accurate reflection of your contact center.
- The reason we always conduct the survey within 24 hours is so that the customer’s recollection of the details of the contact experience is still fresh in their minds.
A post-contact survey is important to use to measure OCR because it is the customer’s opinion that matters most. The customer is the only one that can judge whether they expected their issue to be resolved, and whether it is truly resolved. Be aware that some companies use internal measures as a proxy for the voice of the customer; however, we typically find that internal measures can tend to inflate the measure of OCR by 10% to 20%.
The most important message that I felt came from my webinar was that the industry average for One Contact Resolution is just 59%. This is an alarming number for the industry because it is really saying that 41% of customers have to use multiple contacts to get their issue resolved. That is a rallying cry for the industry to improve performance.