When evaluating your outbound call center team’s performance, there are a few things you must ask yourself.
By Michelle Perry, Operations Manager
When evaluating your outbound call center team’s performance, there are a few things you must ask yourself.
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- Have you given them clear and concise goals?
- Do you have metrics in place so you can measure and track key performance indicators (KPI’s)?
- Is your team communicating with you frequently?
- Are you communicating updates to your team frequently?
What should you measure?
The choice about what metrics to measure and track is an integral part of a successful strategy for an outbound call center campaign. The metrics you select to measure need to be chosen to support the goals of those running the program. These individual pieces are important! Without each of them, it’s hard to get a full and complete picture of current performance.
Here are seven common metrics to evaluate performance in an outbound call center.
1. First Call Close
This metric is probably one of the most valuable to track for many organizations. If an agent gets a potential customer on the phone, this is the best time to close the deal. A callback can have very low-performance metrics and can be a waste of resources.
2. Conversion Rate
This is the percentage of calls that resulted in what is considered a success for the program. Success can be defined as the number of sales, the number of appointments, or perhaps surveys completed. It depends on what the overall goal is of the program in the outbound call center.
3. Calls per Agent
This metric tracks the efficiency of each agent. Agents need to be motivated to make calls. If they are not, this can severely lower success results. It is imperative that the agents understand the expectations on how many calls they should be making. Dialing strategies can drastically improve this metric. Dials per hour is a factor you need to watch closely.
4. Contacts per Hour
This metric tracks the number of calls and whether a connection was made each hour. Did we speak with a potential customer?
5. Average Call Length
This metric is useful for fine-tuning and adjusting the presentation and wrap up. Sales conversations that take too long can reduce success by the customers losing interest and hanging up.
Are the agents taking too long to wrap up their calls—taking notes, selecting a disposition, wasting time? This time will affect not only their average call length but will also go hand in hand with calls per agent and per hour.
6. List Conversion
List conversion measures the number of prospects that closed as a success in comparison to the total number of potential prospects. A low conversion rate indicates possible problems with the calling list. Things such as potential bad numbers, wrong numbers, disconnected numbers, improper inclusion of “do not call” numbers.
7. Call Quality
We use call quality for outbound call center teams to provide insight into how the agents are performing. It is also a way to give feedback to clients. Call quality is simply a scoring system based on an audit of calls to ensure the agents are following what’s asked of them.
Aspects of call quality to consider are:
- Are the agents following their script?
- Are they being polite and representing the customer appropriately?
- Are they building rapport?
- Are they closing assumptively?
- Are they using their rebuttals?
The above are just a few considerations when trying to evaluate if your outbound call center teams are productive.
Remember that communication with your outbound call center team is crucial. It should be clear and frequent. It is imperative that the team has a full understanding of the expectations and then do everything in their power to meet and exceed those. In an article by McKinsey, they say goal-setting can help improve employee engagement in a way that elevates performance and benefits organizations overall when done correctly.
When all of these pieces fall into place, and you are achieving the clearly defined goals you have identified, the most important questions you need to ask are, is your client happy and are they bringing you continued business and growing their campaign? If the answers are yes, then your outbound call center team is doing a fantastic job!
Michelle Perry is an Operations Manager for Telepromm with primary responsibilities, including overseeing the daily operations of client programs and agent success. Michelle has over 25 years of call center experience, of which the last eight have been with Telepromm. Michelle is very passionate about quality work and driving performance. The depth and breadth of knowledge Michelle has, helps facilitate the development of a strong working relationship with her clients.
