hello and welcome to managing metrics a series of videos highlighting contact center metrics
that matter to managers i'm bruce belfiore and this video focuses on first contact resolution
we will define fcr talk about why it's important indicate the ways it can be measured mention some
typical ranges and explain impacts fcr can have on your operations this video is brought to you
by benchmark portal the source for contact center training certification benchmarking and consulting
if you like this presentation please subscribe and hit the like button so that you can keep
receiving free content like this video so let's define first contact resolution
fcr is a customer facing quality metric that tells you the percentage of times a customer
issue is resolved on the first try this means the first call if it's a voice channel contact
the first email if it arrives through that channel or the first chat session and so on
communications that are escalated or transferred to another contact center person for resolution
are still considered an fcr as long as the customer in the end hangs up the phone or
disconnects from the chat with the situation resolved by the end of that first contact
resolving issues on the first contact is a positive thing for several reasons
customers are happy because their issue is definitively resolved this avoids
frustration and increases customer satisfaction and loyalty leading to repeat business and profits
agents are happy because they feel they have served the customer
well the company saves money because fewer callbacks or recontacts mean fewer agents
are needed and because less time is spent repeating things between customers and agents
i call fcr the magic metric because it has such a high correlation with both customer satisfaction
and costs it is a kpi that measures both quality and operational efficiency
let's make the efficiency component clearer by looking at some numbers we will use the
voice channel for this example though it's the same principle for the other channels
let's say your agents handle a million calls per year and your fcr is 80 with most of the
rest handled on the second call you determined that by conducting some agent training and adding
a knowledge management tool you could increase fcr to 85 percent that 5 performance improvement
translates into about 50 000 fewer calls per year if your average cost per call is 5 then reducing
volume by fifty thousand calls at five dollars per call equals savings of two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars annually a substantial amount of money if the added training to achieve this
would cost twenty five thousand dollars and the improved knowledge management tool would cost a
hundred thousand dollars the total cash out would be a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars
in that case with savings at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and costs at 125 000 you
would have a net savings of 125 000 a six-month payback period in 200 roi in the first year alone
now there are different ways to measure fcr while none of them is perfect the best source is the
customers themselves we recommend including two questions in your post interaction customer survey
question number one is was your issue resolved on this interaction
and the second question is was this the first time you contacted us about this specific issue two yes
answers equal an fcr however a no answer on either question means that the interaction was not an fcr
naturally even this is not perfect there will be occasions where the customer thinks the issue
is resolved but later realizes that the question was not fully resolved and re-contacts the center
however these situations are relatively rare and survey-based customer feedback from as many
customers as possible is still the best practice source for fcr other methodologies used to collect
fcr include centers that have their agents document whether the issue is resolved or not
within the customer record there are also centers that have their qa specialists indicate whether
the interactions they monitor were resolved or not and then there are centers that track
calls from a specific phone number or ani if they do not receive a call back from the same ani after
a certain period of time they consider that the original call was resolved on the first contact
naturally this methodology is only useful in situations where individuals call infrequently
it would not work for example in a situation where the doctor's office calls the same
health insurance call centers multiple times a week about many separate issues
while none of these methodologies is perfect it's better to track fcr than not to track it
at all and as said initially we recommend that you get the input directly from your customers
when we look at fcr across all industries we see that the average is about
85 percent however there's a significant range according to industry and call type
the credit card industry has a 91 average while property and casualty insurance is at 78
due to differences in call content and difficulty if you want more specific
information on how you compare to others in your industry sector look for our published
industry reports which you can find through the resource links in the description below
fcr also has an important impact on operations workforce planners must take fcr into account
when there are operational changes that might affect the percentage of calls resolved as fcr
even a couple percentage points change in either direction can mean an impact on staffing and your
operating budget it is crucial to benchmark fcr against other centers in your industry
that take similar calls to the ones your center handles when resolution rates are lower than the
industry average you should look for the root causes of the performance gap typical areas of
opportunity to improve performance include agent training improving knowledge management and legacy
back-end systems providing access to expert hubs and improving escalation practices in general for
difficult calls activating seamless crm technology which shows the client's record past and present
if you feel training is an issue please talk to us about certified training of agents
supervisors and coaches this can be of great benefit to your operation and now a question for
you on first contact resolution which approach does your center use to measure this metric
please write your answer and any other comments below we'd love for you to share your thoughts
and ideas with the community of contact center experts who regularly visit us here you can also
find links to some of our other valuable resources in the description below and don't forget to like
and subscribe to our channel to get great content delivered to you good luck maximizing your first
contact resolution i'm bruce belfury thank you for listening to this episode of managing metrics