Benchmarks for First-Call Resolution

Posted 06-Jul-2005 09:12 AM
Hi, can someone advise me on what best in class First Call Resolution figures look like?

We are achieving around 70% (mobile telco), which I think is probably quite good.

How do we compare?

regards, Darren

Chris Stiehl
Member

Posted 07-Jul-2005 09:44 AM
Darren-
In one company that I have worked for we asked customers if this was their first call about the problem they were calling about. Over 40% said "No!" We thought 40% rework was very poor. I'm not sure 30%, in your case, is a great score. Obviously, the goal is to satisfy everyone on the first call, and strive to do that more and more efficiently. That's what the companies I have helped have tried to do.

Vladimir Dimitroff
Member

Posted 14-Jul-2005 09:38 AM
Darren -

There is no 'best in class'—you have to see it in a specific context:

- What are your competitors' scores? You have to be well ahead of the best among them, if your strategy is to differentiate by customer service. It is good enough to be like the average among them, if your strategy is to consistently offer the lowest prices in your market. The importance of this KPI is influenced by the main strategic orientation—what is yours?

- What are your customers' expectations? Remember, their idea of customer service is shaped by their broader experiences and best practice doesn't have to come from your sector. A customer may not be comparing you with your competitors, but with their bank's call centre, or their airline's one—wherever they experienced the bset level of service.

- What is your total traffic? Not the volume of calls you receive, but the frequency your average subscriber needs to contact you. That relates to your overall performance in other areas—if they have frequent problems (e.g. with network quality, or billing errors) and have to call you every week, additional calls only make life worse for them. A customer who only had to call you once in 5 years will forgive you for having to make a second call (provided you solve his porblem by then, a third call has been found to be a dissatisfaction threshold correlated to switching providers).

- What is your definition of 'resolution'? I have seen companies where they count for a resolved call when they gave the customer the right number to call ('we don't provide balance information here, but you can check your balance by dialling...'). If you are managing end-to-end customer processes, you will count as resolution when not only the customer's problem was solved, but s/he was duly informed about the solution, thanked for helping the company improve its operations and asked if s/he was happy with the outcome (and what else we could do for them). Your scores may come a bit down, but you are doing a better job if you close the loop to the very end.

Having said all that, you may be interested to hear that one client I worked with, measuring by the right definition of resolution, had this metric in the upper 80-s. And that's when less than 50% of the calls are about problems—the majority are about upgrades, new products and value-added services.

Which brings us to this class of contacts: campaign response. Do you count these, or only complaints? Are you aware how the 1st call resolution of campaign responses impacts marketing effectivenes, sales, acquisitions or up-sell revenues?

No simple answers, I'm afraid—but I hope you get my point: look at your metrics in a broader context and align them with higher business objectives and long-term strategy.

Vladimir Dimitroff
PRISM Consulting (UK)
vdimitroff@prism-gb.com