Comprehensive Call Center Metrics
2-day in-person or 4-day virtual instructor-led training course - $2,395
Private on-site and virtual training is available
RCCSP
  Professional
    Education
       Alliance

Overview

Learn the art and science of managing with metrics,discover solutions, and jump-start your call center's improvement initiatives.

In this course you will learn how to achieve superior performance by aligning metric-driven improvements with contact center goals and strategies. Course material is in-depth and comprehensive, reaching far beyond definitions, calculations and what’s “popular”. You will explore best practice uses and applications of metrics at every job level, from the C-Suite and operations management, to supervisory roles and front-line service delivery. Participants will learn to assess the health of the call center and to spot performance issues before they become management problems. Participants will explore using metrics to identify solutions to performance issues and improve processes impacting customer access, service technologies, service efficiency, quality assurance, motivation and retention, workforce management, cost management, and contact center culture.

Roll up your sleeves. This is a highly interactive, intense course where attendees will participate in hands-on exercises and real-world problem-solving. You’ve never attended anything like this before. We guarantee it.

Learning Objectives

Participants will learn:

  • Select metrics that help drive the contact center’s strategy.
  • Understand capacity, utilization, efficiency,effectiveness, and productivity metric categories and what these metrics say about the business.
  • Compute 30 contact center metrics and understand their use in assessing and managing performance.
  • Craft metric scorecards for managers, supervisors and agents that are fair and encourage positive change.
  • Set handle time targets that balance speed and quality.
  • Develop effective management strategies for reducing talk time, hold time, wrap-up time and overall handle time across the entire team.
  • Use science and mathematics to cut wait time in half without adding any staff.
  • Set realistic Service Level targets that balance caller tolerance, future call volumes, agent effort, and the cost of compensation.
  • Understand how service level, inbound call volume, staff schedules and adherence all interact to impact customer wait time and staff occupancy levels.
  • Manage wrap-up time through correct system configuration of auto/timed ACW and correct agent use of AUX ACW.
  • Explore alternative methods for measuring schedule adherence, and cultivate agent buy-in.
  • Assess employee job satisfaction using scientific research and occupational psychology.
  • Determine exactly what managers and supervisors must do to improve quality and decrease agent turnover.
  • Design and configure Interactive Voice Response menus options to minimize customer navigation time.

Deliverables and Tools

  • Current call center assessment
  • SWOT analysis template for assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your call center
  • Template for creating a standard operating procedures manual
  • Sample metrics reports and tools
  • 2 days of instructor led training, with activities, discussion, and practical application of new skills
  • Student course manual and call center management reference
  • USB containing tools, templates, and software used in class

Who Should Participate

This training course is for anyone who wants to improve their understanding of call center quantitative management techniques. Perfect for beginners to the very experienced, this course starts with the basics and increases in complexity at a pace everyone can follow. Professiobnals that should attend this course include:

  • Contact center and help desk managers
  • QA Analysts and call center coaches
  • Performance analysts
  • Professionals that provide services to the contact center
  • Directors and executives that oversee contact center performance and require a useful set of KPIs for decision making
  • Leaders challenged by unacceptable hold times, scheduling, coverage, agent accountability, service level success, attrition, and other performance issues
  • Supervisors with responsibility for agent oversight

Prerequisites

Attendees should possess a basic understanding of what a call center is, how calls flow into a center, and knowledge of basic call center terminology. Course materials are in English, and attendees must possess a high level of English fluency.

Course Content

Aligning Contact Center Metrics & Organizational Strategy

  • Document the organization’s strategic goals
  • Identify and document near-term strategies for the call center
  • Identify contributions the contact center can make to corporate goals
  • Pinpoint root causes of contribution success and failure
  • Draft quality monitoring components that support contact center strategy
  • Use the quality monitoring program to drive simultaneous, team-wide performance improvement
  • The important difference between metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Performing a Contact Center Assessment

  • Review business process modeling concepts
    • Define your center’s service product
    • Define your center’s service transaction
    • Define your center’s production process
  • Assess the contact center’s maturity
  • Perform a contact center SWOT analysis
  • Understand the importance and use of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and targets
  • Understand the importance and use of Operating Level Agreements (OLAs) and targets
  • An approach to reviewing contact center performance metrics
    • Definitions
    • Useful scorecard classifications
    • How to calculate the measure
    • Relationships between key metrics
    • How to establish metric target values
    • Evaluating results

Efficiency Metrics: Tracking Effort in the Service Delivery Process

  • Define Call Handle Time and what is included
    • Who needs Average Handle Time?
  • Define Talk Time
    • Call handling and call control techniques
    • Easy reductions in talk time
  • Define Hold Time
    • Explain how Hold Time is captured
    • Review standard operating procedures for placing callers on hold
    • Differentiate Average Hold Time, and Hold of the Hold, and identify which of the two metrics is useful when evaluating agents
  • Define After Contact Work (ACW)
    • Explain Timed ACW, what it’s for, and how it can be configured in your call center
    • Explain AUX ACW
    • Discuss agent work completed during After Contact Work
  • Strategize 30 ways managers can improve team-wide agent efficiencies
  • Discuss best practices for setting efficiency targets and managing outlier performance
  • Why “Go faster!” doesn’t work

Capacity Metrics: Tracking Service Accessibility

  • Define blockage and how to reduce or eliminate blockage
  • Define Average Speed of Answer
    • Identify the most significant drivers of wait time
    • Demonstrate how call center engineering techniques can reduce wait time by half
    • Discuss IVR Analytics and the optimization information they provide
  • Explain the two Abandonment Rate calculation methods
    • Innumerate the seven factors of caller wait time tolerance
    • Analyze time to abandonment and hypothesize possible causes and solutions
  • Define Service Level
    • Who needs Service Level?
    • Who set the Service Level target for your call center?
    • How are Service Level targets determined?
    • Describe data sources that contribute to setting realistic Service Level targets
    • Understand the risks inherent in your Service Level “blind spot”
    • Calculate Delay of the Delay
  • Calculate Self-Service Usage Rates
    • Brainstorm self-service technologies for addressing high volume call types
  • Analyze Attrition Rate
    • Differentiate the terms attrition, turnover and churn in a contact center context
    • Calculate your center’s cost of attrition
    • Discuss strategies for reducing attrition
  • Collect useful Employee Job Satisfaction data
    • Explain why affective commitment and job satisfaction are statistically correlated to first contact resolution (FCR) and customer satisfaction
    • Define the 16 drivers of positive call center culture
    • Discuss the most critical changes you would advocate to create a high-quality contact center culture

Utilization Metrics: Tracking Application of the Workforce

  • Define Available Time
  • Define Auxiliary Time
    • Define AUX Codes useful in your call center
  • Define Idle Time
  • Define Occupancy Rate
    • Review best practice occupancy rate targets for
      • Centers with short transactional call types
      • Centers with longer consultative call types
    • Describe negative outcomes that follow sustained periods of high occupancy
    • Explain the dynamics and tradeoffs of occupancy rate, wait time, and service level
    • Strategize methods of stabilizing occupancy
  • Schedule Adherence, and Non-Adherence
    • Calculate schedule adherence
      • For phone duty shifts only
      • For all activities throughout the workday
    • Develop strategies for reducing non-adherence to schedule
      • Discuss adherence training exercises
      • Demonstrate an adherence coaching session
      • Brainstorm adherence rewards and recognition ideas
    • Setting adherence targets
  • Workforce management efficiency metrics
    • Define Forecasting Accuracy
    • Define Scheduling Efficiency
  • Staff Shrinkage
    • Define shrinkage
    • Controllable vs. non-controllable
    • Inside- vs. outside-the-building shrinkage

Effectiveness Metrics: Tracking Outcomes

  • Review select customer satisfaction measurement best practices
    • Select a survey method
    • Determine the surveying frequency
    • Design questions that result in actionable information
    • Design questions that capture trending data
    • Determine when it is appropriate to update the survey and what updates to make
  • First Call/Contact Resolution
    • Explain why contact centers focus on FCR
    • Innumerate five primary factors impacting FCR
    • Discuss alternative methods of capturing FCR data
    • Use an innovative method to estimate your contact center’s FCR rate
    • Investigate and discuss opportunities for improving FCR rate
  • Quality Score
    • Describe the quality monitoring and scoring process used to construct agent quality scores
    • Construct metric targets that balance and reflect the importance of both quality and efficiency
    • Describe your center’s auto-fail criteria
  • Error Rate
    • Identify and discuss standard operating procedures and what constitutes an “error”
  • Documentation Rate
    • Review technologies and monitoring methods for evaluating contact documentation

Productivity Metrics: Tracking Throughput

  • Understand the critical difference between Call Type and Disposition Type
  • Implement high impact management methods that quickly improve contact center performance
  • Track contact dispositions
    • Conversion rates
    • Transfer rate
    • Escalation rate
      • Strategize methods for reducing escalations and transfers
    • Bail Rates
      • Analyze time into bail data and hypothesize probable causes and solutions
  • Avoiding misuse of the Calls per Agent metric

Investment Metrics: Managing Costs

  • Explain how various investment metrics are computed:
    • Cost per Contact
    • Cost per Resolution
    • Compensation Cost per Contact
  • Brainstorm strategies for reducing Cost per Contact
  • Define and explain the purpose of computing Cost per Channel

Creating Balanced Metric Scorecards

  • Align metrics with contact center business processes
  • Using metrics, track the life of a call through the contact center’s business processes
  • Define standards and criteria for selecting performance scorecard metrics
  • Determine appropriate metrics by job level, including
    • Strategic metrics
    • Operations metrics
    • Supervisory metrics
    • Front-line service delivery metrics
  • Create a balanced contact center scorecard
  • Create a balanced supervisor scorecard
  • Create a balanced agent scorecard
    • Define useful new hire training metrics
    • Define useful nesting/shadowing phase metrics
  • Choose a metric scorecard presentation
    • Compare performance to established targets
    • Plot positive and negative metric variances from period to period
  • Determine the right frequency for metric reporting
  • Determine time intervals for calculating fair and meaningful averages and rates

Course Instructors

RCCSP faculty instructors have both call center management and training delivery expertise.  They are certified at  the “Master Trainer” level for delivery of this course and will adapt the course delivery to meet the needs of participants' varying levels of experience and differing call center environments. RCCSP's faculty includes instructors experienced in non-profit and government contact center environments, in addition to large and small for-profit environments.  Instructors are located throughout the USA.

Registration Fees

The per student registration fee for this training program is $2,395 and includes:

  • 2-day instructor-led training
  • All training materials
  • Course certificate of completion
  • Breakfast, lunch and refreshments each day.

To register, follow the "Book Now" link below or call (708) 246-0320. 

Seminar Schedule
Feb 20-23, 2024 4 virtual sessions
Mornings
Feb 20-23
9:00 AM CST - 1:00 PM CST
Mar 12-15, 2024 4 virtual sessions
Mornings
Mar 12-15
9:00 AM CST - 1:00 PM CST
May 6-7, 2024 Atlanta, GA Embassy Suites Atlanta Buckhead
Oct 21-22, 2024 Orlando, FL Embassy Suites International Drive Convention Center

Class Start and Stop Times & Dress Code

Instructor-led classroom session begin at 9:00 AM and end at 5:00 PM each day. Continental breakfast is served at 8:30 AM. Business casual attire is appropriate. No jeans or sneakers please.

Virtual instructor-led courses are delivered over four consection half days, Tuesday through Friday.

Private In-House and Virtual Training Option

Private training offers the added benefits of facilitated team interaction; a confidential environment where plans, processes, and policies can be openly discussed; minimized travel costs; and little or no travel time.  For support centers with a number of managers, supervisors, and team leads, on-site training can maximize your training investment. Private on-site courses are limited to 15 attendees per class.  Private virtual courses are limited to 6 attendees per class.0

Pricing for an on-site course delivered at your location is determined based on a "Base Fee" for up to six attendees, and a per person fee for each attendee thereafter.  On-site fees are all inclusive:

  • Base Fee for up to 6 participants - $13,995 includes:
    • 2-day instructor-led training course
    • All training materials
    • Includes all instructor's travel and lodging expenses (in the continental US)
  • Additional participants - $995 each

Additional travel surcharges will be charged for travel outside of the continental USA and for seminars scheduled within three weeks, or paid for within three weeks, of the onsite delivery date.

The customer site must provide suitable meeting space, any desired meals or refreshments, and the following presentation supplies:

  • A flip chart easel with self-stick flip chart paper and markers
  • LCD wall monitor or projection unit and projection screen

Comprehensive Call Center Metrics On-Site, up to 6 participants, $13,995
Additional Attendees, $995 per person

For more training course options, see the entire Contact Center Training Calendar of dates and locations.

For more IT, technical and field support training course options, see the Help Desk, ITIL, and Support Center Calendar.


Terms & Conditions

Seminar agenda and assigned instructors are subject to change.

Payment is due prior to the seminar.

Public seminar cancellation policy.  Registrants may cancel up to fourteen days in advance of the seminar start date for a full refund, less administrative fees of $400.  Or, you may transfer your registration to another date or member of your company at no additional charge.  Please notify us as soon as possible. Registrants cancelling within fourteen days of the seminar will receive credit, less administrative fees of $400, toward any other Resource Center seminar.

On-site training scheduling and cancellation policy.  On-site training fees must be paid to reserve a training date.  Additional travel surcharges will be charged for travel to training locations outside of the continental USA and for training courses scheduled within three weeks, or paid for within three weeks, of the on-site delivery date.Organizations may cancel up to 21 days in advance of the seminar delivery date for a full refund, less administrative fees of 25% of the base fee.

If for any reason you are unsatisfied with the training, please notify the instructor by the end of the first day. If you decide to cancel the remainder of the training program, the instructor will collect all training materials.  Fees paid, less a prorata one-day on-site training base fee plus any travel surcharges, will be refunded.

Cancellation by provider. In the unlikely event that a seminar must be cancelled by seminar provider due to unavoidable circumstances, you will be notified at least two weeks prior to the seminar date, and your payment will be refunded.

Seminar provider is not responsible for losses due to cancellation including losses and penalties on advanced or non-refundable airfares.

In all circumstances, seminar provider's liability shall be limited to fees received.

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Dates, Locations and Registration

What some past attendees say...

"The RCCSP instructor was fabulous, engaging and provided great examples to drive topics home. I'll be taking a deeper look into our customer service operations, specifically FCR, transfers, AHT by call type, and SOPs."
-- Customer Service Manager,
EHI, St. Louis, MO

"In spite of several years in the support center, I am leaving this course with fresh ideas and an improved understanding of how to optimize team performance. And, I have identified more positive ways to present our performance tracking and results."
-- Operations Manager, Change Healthcare, Nashville, TN

"Very professional organization. RCCSP provides comprehensive education with practical and actionable information that can be put into practice immediately. After attending this course I anticipate an improved ability to report and monitor metrics more effectively as we continue to grow."
-- Call Center Director, Behavioral Health Group, Dallas, TX

"Outstanding. I really got a lot from this course. Metrics, quality, and performance measures need to be in place and this course assisted with that. RCCSP is organized, knowledgeable and tailors to our needs."
-- Program Manager, US Treasury

"RCCSP is AMAZING."
-- Manager of Call Center Operations, Curaleaf, Miami, FL

"This is one of the best educational academies I have attended. It surpasses other call center training courses. Content was detailed, well arranged and the instructor was superb. Our supervisors are new, and this information will help them understand metrics, KPIs and schedule adherence factors. Outstanding course and organization."
-- Superintendent, Tucson Water, Tucson, AZ

"Excellent! We will use metrics, take a closer look at the impact of attrition and more. I learned a lot from this very detailed, informative, and very professional course."
-- Director of Patient & Practice Support, Novasom Inc.

"This very high quality training was given by a very knowledgeable instructor. Concise materials and interactive exercises were helpful. Now I have a better awareness of shrinkage, and I will be creating metric scorecards. I had only attended conferences and "symposiums" in the past. This was my first multi-day training course. Fabulous!"
-- Director Customer Care, Defense Finance and Accounting Services, Cleveland, OH

"The material covered really helped me to better understand why call center metrics, processes and quality drive the results. The training was very informative, well-structured and, overall, one of the best classes I've ever attended. I would say to anyone thinking about attending the training, don't hesitate. Take the class!"
-- Call Center Director, Purple Heart Foundation, Woodbridge, VA

"There will be so many positive changes now, with the correct understanding and application of metrics! RCCSP's professionals are experts in call centers who understand the underlying science and convert that knowledge into useful training."
-- Customer Service Manager, Slavic 401k Plans, Phoenix, AZ

"This course has provided me more than I can picture incorporating in the near term - more than enough to aim for within the next 18-24 months. I'll begin with factoring in shrinkage for a more realistic picture of what Service Level we can target and to get a better picture of the true cost of operations, then aim for better call volume management through engineered IVR and queue configuration."
-- Customer Service Operations Coordinator and Help Desk Manager, ASM Research, Chesapeake, VA

"The information provided is extremely useful. I understand what the metrics mean and will be able to convey the importance to staff. Very good course. Very professional organization."
-- Supervisor, MO Division of Employment Security

"RCCSP is a very good organization with a motive to support their clients with best contact center knowledge and expertise. With this training we are prepared to increase first call resolution, lower agent attrition, reduce the average handle time of inbound calls, increase customer satisfaction with a lower average speed of answer, and increase revenue."
-- Data Analyst, Lincare, Inc., Clearwater, FL

"I loved this class. Very informative. It gave me a different outlook and method to evaluating our performance."
-- Manager, Palmetto GBA,
Columbia, SC

"This very comprehensive training not only presents theory but it provides "hands on" participatory sessions. I learned how to put in place and track measures to reduce absenteeism and to pay keen attention to metrics and what they mean. Every call center should invest in this kind of training for their management team, as it is an eye opener to some things that you should be doing that you are not or not doing well, especially concerning metrics and their impact. The trainer delivered the material in a detailed, professional, and fun way which made it easy to learn. I wish it could have continued for 5 days."
-- Manager, -Services Group International Montego Bay, Jamaica

"A Godsend. This is exactly what I needed. This course was much more comprehensive that others I've attended and more specific. Improved performance metrics will be a positive change for our center."
-- Regional Contact Center Manager, Medical Transportation Management, Jackson, MS

"I highly recommend this course. We are going to use all the metrics covered here to measure our customer satisfaction response. It would be so beneficial for all managers to attend this course; it would be eye opening for them to understand how a best practices call center operates."
-- Branch Manager, Slavic 401k, Phoenix, AZ

"After this, I'll be changing quite a few AUX codes and establishing a balanced agent scorecard."
-- Director, Tech Help Line, Florida Realtors, Orlando, FL

"I expect to see improved efficiency and lower costs as a result of this training, better attention to the customer experience and increased quality. RCCSP is helpful, supportive and professional."
-- 2-1-1 Director, United Way of
Salt Lake City, UT

"This instructor was hands down the best trainer I have ever experienced. Each moment was filled with useful information presented in ways that kept me captivated. Money well spent. I can't wait for another session"
-- Reservations Supervisor, Enterprise Rent-a-Car

"The RCCSP Professional Education Alliance is fully dedicated to ensuring the success of call centers. After attending this course, I anticipate a significant decrease in our overall Average Handel Time with more careful handling by specific call type."
-- Manager, Wright-Patterson Credit Union, Dayton, OH

"This training experience was outstanding! I can't say enough complimentary things about the instructor. She did an excellent job facilitating training - very interactive and informative. It was an overall good experience that I'll be sharing with management of my company and my colleagues in the industry."
-- Manager, Contact Center Operations, Trellis

"FANTASTIC!"
-- Vice President, Affordable Housing Management Association
of East Texas

"Very impressed with the program. Awesome. Great material. Easy to follow. The instructor was amazing, funny and knowledgeable and provided a great cohesive learning environment.
-- Senior Manager Workforce Planning, Goodwill Industries

"Very 'real life' learning examples supported by underlying call center science = awesome."
-- Benefits and Disability Supervisor, Medtronic

"Excellent! Very detailed and informative with a lot of good take-away tools. Instructor knowledge and teaching ability was off the scale. This is a very professional organization. I learned a lot and I am excited to take more RCCSP courses."
-- Director of Patients and Practice Support, Novason,

"This course was loaded with information and our organization got a lot out of this class. Very intense, a lot of information, but incredibly helpful, valuable and relevant info! Great organization!"
-- Fraud Center Manager,
Jack Henry & Associates

"RCCSP CCMC training is unbelievable! I look forward to helping our staff understand occupancy and adherence."
-- Director, Customer Support, JHA

"The RCCSP Professional Education Alliance is a useful ally. They have the expertise."
-- Service Manager, Community Information Centre of Ottawa

"5 out of 5 stars from me for the instructor's knowledge and teaching ability, course content and coverage, quality of the tools and materials, RCCSP professionalism, and value of the RCCSP certification."
-- Director of Tech Helpline,
Florida Realtors

"For someone who has never worked in a call center environment, after attending this training, I feel very confident, knowledgeable, and well equipped to accept the challenge to manage a call center. I personally believe that every call center should invest in this training for their management team, as it is an eye opener, especially with respect to the correct meaning and uses of metrics. The RCCSP trainer delivered the material in a detailed, professional and fun way which made it easy to learn. I wished it could have continued for another two days. I cannot wait to take my next RCCSP training!"
-- P. Bent-Hall

"Absolutely fantastic. The KPI and Metrics framework in particular really simplified a daunting task for me. As a new manager, attending this event made me feel so much more prepared for my new responsibilities, and I honestly feel like my managerial skills have jumped ahead by about 4 years."
-- Manager of End-User Services, Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Recommended Follow-on Courses:
Call Center Workforce Management Hands-on Boot Camp

Call Center Management Certification Boot Camp

Best Practices in Quality Improvement

The Evolving Customer Contact Channel: Optimizing Conversational User Interface Design
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