Customer Quality Reporting: Real Customer Satisfaction Measurement - from the horse's mouth

A Customer Satisfaction and Contact Center Quality Performance Monitoring Service
Contact centers deliver services to customers and prospects by telephone, email, and chat. It is essential that organizations have insight into the quality of those interactions. The internal perspective is often delivered through a quality listening team which reviews contacts and scores measuring based upon predetermined set of criteria. In many organizations the internal quality measures are those elements of the interaction that are believed to be important to the customer as well as company focused compliance elements.

For a number of organizations this is where the quality process ends. Research and pundits tell us the measuring customer satisfaction (CSAT) is critical as CSAT has a strong correlation to customer loyalty and repurchase which contributes to lifetime value. Measuring call center CSAT is a challenge for a lot of companies. Some organizations employ omnibus CSAT surveys where they attempt to understand the customer’s satisfaction with a number of different and distinct elements. These surveys tend to be indicative of the overall feelings of satisfaction. This type of approach is not very useful when assessing transactional activities such as those generally handled by contact centers.

Some centers have embraced Net Promoter score (NPS) as a single metric upon which they can gauge the success of satisfying the customer. Net Promoter, however, is a single metric. It’s not an unbiased measure by the nature of its terminology. It is a one dimensional metric: “Will you recommend”. Many experts recommend that combining platforms is going to give you a rounder view of the customer than any single metric can achieve.

First Contact Resolution or FCR, is often touted as a premier qualitative call center benchmark. Historically the largest single challenge organizations have faced in reporting on FCR has been the data gathering process and interpretation. Very few centers are able to manage FCR on a ‘live’ basis and as a result are forced to rely on other ‘stand in’ metrics, such as a second contact from the same customer within a defined timeframe. This metric is at best an approximation as we cannot be 100% sure that this contact was related to the previous contact.

Contact centers have a number of other tools to assess the customer satisfaction such as post call IVR, after call outbound, and email surveys. Research shows that most contact centers only employ internal data as a stand in for actual customer satisfaction. Internal quality teams are important elements in many call centers. They generally complete the dual tasks of assessing call quality employing a predetermined evaluation form which highlights element which the company believes to be important to customers; and secondly as a compliance team- ensuring that agents are complaint with company policies, procedures and quality elements (proper opening, verbatim scripting, etc.).

Research and practical experience however shows that there are constant struggles with internal quality including: consistency, proper calibration, subjectivity, and scoring. And of course the fact that the basis of the quality assessment are elements thought to be important to the customer.

The Taylor Reach approach does not make any assumptions as to what the customer may value. We get our information from the ‘horse’s mouth’ – we ask the customer.

This program does not replace your quality department, it augments it. Centers still need to monitor the staff, coach for improvement and consistency. This program simply allows a company to now track Customer Satisfaction, Net Promoter score and FCR on an organizational, center, team and agent level. This assists the quality team and supervisors in allocating their efforts where they can have the greatest impact on the customer.

The Taylor Reach Customer Quality Reporting provides center with a 360° view by significantly increasing the visibility of the customer’s perspective and point of view related to the services they receive from the call center.

Best practice centers measure CSAT based on what the customer determines

The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. has developed Customer Quality Reporting as a service to assist organizations in measuring and gauging customer satisfaction.

The Customer Quality Reporting Program
Taylor Reach works with your organization to identify the anticipated customer response to an emailed survey. The goal is to deliver four to five customer responses per agent per month. This creates a sample size approximately similar to that achieved with internal quality programs. This sample varies by organization. Initial outgoing surveys are 100 per agent per month.
Each email contains a survey and or survey link. The sample survey asks the following CSAT questions:
1. How satisfied were you with your interaction with our call center on date at time
2. Was your call/contact the first time you had contacted us regarding that issue?
3. Has your issue or inquiry been resolved?
4. “On a scale from 1 to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”

Taylor Reach manages all aspects of the program, including:
• Receive the customers to be sampled (a file containing customer email addresses)
• Creating and maintaining a ‘kill file’ to ensure that no customer is sampled more than once every six months,
• Sending out the surveys,
• Receipt, tabulation and analysis of survey results,

• Global reporting. This center wide reporting provides insight in the operational effectiveness of the center from a customer perspective. By aggregating all survey responses we gain the insight from hundreds of customer interactions. This center wide perspective is the customer’s statement regarding how well the organization is performing in terms of Customer Satisfaction, Net Promoter score and First Contact Resolution. Center wide reporting includes:
o CSAT,
o NPS,
o FCR,

Trend Reporting. In these reports, we track relative performance of all three metrics over time. This reporting supports coaching guidance, based upon trend performance and specific issues.

Reporting by Agent. The ability to link specific satisfaction, net promoter and FCR data down to agent level is a significant step forward for any center. This agent level data allows for training, coaching and mentoring efforts to be targeted to poorer performing staff. It also allows the results of such coaching efforts to be surfaced quickly in subsequent reporting periods. Agent Level reporting includes:
o CSAT,
o NPS,
o FCR,

The costs for this program are outlined below;
Set Up Fee $2,500 (one time fee)
Cost per Agent per channel per month $35.00

Cost Example
In a center with 25 agents who handle phone calls, emails and chats the monthly cost will be $35 * 25 agents * 3 channels or $2,625 per month. The same center handling voice only contacts would cost $875 per month.

All Taylor Reach fees are subject to applicable taxes. All invoices are due upon receipt.
Customer Quality reporting provides a unique and timely insight into your customers. The customer voice is surfaced in your contact center. It is transparent to management and the senior leadership. This visibility delivers significant benefits beyond the call center and across the organization.

Customer Quality reporting tracks activities and improvements and ties those changes to the downstream customer provided data.

Customer Quality reporting is completed by The Taylor Reach Group, Inc, a well respected and established consulting and analysis firm. This independence provides credibility and a perspective that is not possible to achieve internally. Customer Quality reporting can be initiated quickly and with virtually no effect on your day-to-day call operations. It is convenient and continues to operate independently regardless of the internal challenges and changes to a center.

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Measuring FCR in your Call Center

FCR is a popular topic we see on our call center consulting engagements.
Yesterday’s post dealt with the cost of ineffective call or contact resolution, citing an 80% First Contact Resolution (FCR) rate will add 25% to your average cost per contact and the importance of budgeting accurately to reflect the actual costs. In today’s post I wanted to examine a number of ways that FCR is measured in call centers and risks, benefits and various ‘gremlins’ that can influence the accuracy of your FCR statistics and present some ideas to help address or mitigate these issues.

Increasingly pundits and call center consultants like ourselves are promoting the use of FCR as the most valuable metrics for call center operations. It is difficult to argue against FCR as the perfect measure. On the surface it looks easy. We know customers and prospects are calling us to do something (pay a bill, order a product, get technical help etc.). Studies have consistently shown that when people get what they want, they are happier than when they do not.

For the time being let’s put aside the fact that successfully resolving an inquiry may not give the customer what they want: I want a refund says the customer and we quote David Spade in those old Capital One TV ads and say ‘No’. But FCR should be measuring whether the contact; call, inquiry was resolved, not whether the customer liked the resolution.

It can be challenging to measure FCR in a contact center environment. If you ask ten people how they do it you will hear a number of different responses. Some of the measurement approaches we have heard of include:

• Telephone Call Detail based – If the customer calls back within ‘X’ hours/days (48 hours, 72 hours 1 week), so the theory goes then we did not resolve the customers issue.
• IVR Survey based – What could be better than offering customers the ability to tell us how we did by offering them a post call survey.
• Agent based – The agent asks the customer if they have resolved the customers issue and this is then entered into the CRM or similar system.

Each of these approaches has benefits and potential risks or shortcomings. For example the Telephone Call Detail approach has the benefit of presenting a black and white picture of FCR. Once you have accepted the time window associated and accept the premise that the customer could have no other reason for calling again then the results have a good level of consistency.

Of course there may be reasons for the customer to call back: they ordered the wrong size, provided the wrong ship to address, received a new bill in the mail, have a second account with different issues etc. In the absence of robust analytics to provide a high level of data interrogation most centers will end up with a level of ‘false negatives’. That is to say that they will identify calls as not resolved when in fact the subsequent contact could be unrelated. This will mean a lower FCR score than they may actually be the case.

In contrast the Agent based approach of asking the customer if their inquiry was resolved before ending the original call, can also result in “false positives’. All of us who have worked as agents or with agents knows that there is a different perspective when speaking with a customer versus listening to the call or being the customer. The agents may ask the customer the question “Have I fully resolved your Inquiry” or something similar or they may not. The agent may simply check the box thinking that they asked the question or because they provided the appropriate response from the knowledgebase, so it must be resolved, right? Of course if the customer sounds unhappy or rushed the agent may choose to answer on the customers behalf etc. All of these scenarios will result in ‘false positives’ that is to say reporting that will indicate a higher FCR rate than likely exists.

One of the most prevalent solutions these days is the IVR survey, which in most cases 3 to 5 questions dealing with the call, as well as with overall satisfaction or net promoter etc. On the surface it appears to be a valid approach. What could be better than asking the customer? But depending on how it is deployed: by the agent seeking consent or before the agent answers the call by the IVR, you can have significant problems.

First as we looked at above the agents will not always offer the survey…in short they will or could play a triage role in limiting who gets into the IVR. Second if the caller agrees to participate before the call is directed to an agent, they may change their mind based on what happens with the call. Consumers and customers will ‘self-select’ whether or not to participate in any survey. If they believe it will help them they often participate, if there is little perceived value then they often will not participate. In consulting projects we have seen customers who ‘believe’ that their problem was resolved and are satisfied with the resolution they participate at a far lower rate than those who feel it was not resolved or who did not like the resolution. This illustration of ‘vested self interest’ can skew the results and reflect a lower FCR than actually exists.

Regardless of which of the above solutions is employed there are some other relevant issues that will influence the FCR reported. For example the customer believes or is promised that they will receive a credit, but that doesn’t appear on their next bill. In this case the customer and even the agent may believe the original contact was fully resolved, but it wasn’t. The same will be true if the product doesn’t arrive when expected (consumers hear 4 to 6 weeks and will expect it in exactly 4 weeks). The service isn’t restored when expected (told it would be back by 5 pm and at 5:01 they will call again); or the tech support routine they are told to run, doesn’t solve the problem. These are all examples of the customer not receiving what they expected, when they expected it. Of course the customers also contribute to FCR failures by not executing what they were to do (not following instructions) or providing inaccurate information of the original call (wrong size, incorrect address, an over limit credit card etc.) which will require a subsequent call.

As you can see effectively managing FCR is not easy and whatever approach you choose to employ, you will need to expect that it will take time for you to work out all of the exceptions, bugs and kinks. Remember that at the end of the day even if your model drives false positive or false negatives if you employ it consistently you will be able to chart improvement and declines period over period.

Let me know if you would like more information on this topic please email me directly at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com or visit our website at http://thetaylorreachgroup.com as we have a number of resources which may assist you in the process of implementing effective FCR measurement and reporting in your call center.

Calculating the Cost of FCR

As a Call Center Consulting firm we have access to numerous studies and interesting research articles. A recent study by the CFI Group suggested that one in five customers come away from a contact centre interaction with unresolved issues. This would suggest to me that the issues in question were not resolved and the First Contact Resolution (FCR) can be no higher than 80%. This will lead to additional contacts and additional cost to the call center operator. But what will this cost really be?

I like to walk through the following process to help clients gain some insight into this hidden cost. I say hidden because most centers do not effectively track resolution. Instead they ask customers through the agent of an IVR survey or worse based upon the agents judgment if the issue was resolved. Of course the customer may not even know if the issue is truly resolved...will the billing credit appear on the next bill? Will the promised gift card be received? Will their service be restored by 5 pm today? None of these issues can be truly labelled as resolved until the required processes and activities are completed. But that is fodder for another post.

Back to the financial costs for an 80% FCR rate: if your average call (or contact) is $5 at an 80% FCR your average resolved contact on first call will cost you $6.25 or 25% more than your cost per contact. Of course those whose issues were not resolved will call back and once again they will receive an 80% FCR and those callers will only receive at best an 80% FCR and so on and so on. After the second call your overall cumulative FCR will be 96% and after three cumulative calls over 99%. But your costs for resolved calls will be $6.25 each and not the $5.00 that is likely in the budget. If you had 10,000 calls/month the annualized savings associated with just a 5% improvement in FCR would be more than $44,000.

This calculation does not factor in the likelihood that the call types that go unresolved are often the more complicated or difficult ones, that will by virtue of their nature represent a significantly larger percentage of Wave 2 and beyond calls than they represented in Wave 1. Nor have we factored in the fact that when the unresolved calls are received they will increase the volumes and adversely affect the scheduled agent hours and by extension the ability of the center to meet its service level and other KPI's such as schedule adherence.

So the costs are far greater than just the cost of repeat callers. Keep this in mind when you are setting your goals and targets and when you establishing you budgets.

FCR adpotion and utilization

First Call Resolution or FCR as it is known is arguably the most significant and important metric in use in contact centers today. Yet this metric is infrequently used and when employed internal approximations or 'stand-ins' often have to be employed. A recent study completed by at Ascent Group ( http://www.ascentgroup.com/) of more than 100 companies in 14 industries found that in companies that are measuring FCR only 44% are competing this measurement based on customer feedback, the balance or 56% employ approximations or 'stand-ins' such Call Monitoring (20%), Agent assessments (8%) and internal calculation (27%).

It is critical to all contact centers to not only know why customers are calling (call types), but also whether and how well the call/contact center performs at resolving the inquiry. Without measuring FCR an organization cannot know how well they are meeting their customers' expectations. In addition at The Taylor Reach Group ( http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/) we have encountered numerous organizations that have been able to reduce operational expense while increasing customer satisfaction by implementing FCR in conjunction with Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and process review to increase resolution rates significantly.

If you are not measuring FCR today, you need to start immediately. The most accurate measure is to ask your customers at the end of each call if you have resolved their 'issue' or reason for their call. (Of course if they say no, you must be prepared to revisit the issue.) After all the customer knows why they called and what their expectations were regarding resolution. If you ask your customers you must be prepared to track the results in your CRM or CIS system. In addition you must validate the results periodically through recorded call verification...this will stop/reduce agents improving their own scores by answering the question for the customer. If you don't have a CRM or CIS then most likely you will employ a stand in such as a second call from the same customer within 48 hours as an indication of FCR not being met on the original call. Depending on the nature of the call and the type of center you operate the time metric of 48 hours may not be appropriate and 24 or 72 may be better. This may also take some fine-tuning to improve the comfort with the result.

If you would like additional information on FCR or other critical metrics in contact center operation please drop me a note at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com.