The 50 Best Tips of 2006

Call Centers & Customer Service

Rather than measuring calls per hour in the contact center, try measuring sales revenue per hour as a success metric.
“We’d probably like customer service reps (CSRs) to take eight calls per hour. Multiply that by our average order of $150, and we want reps to generate $1,250 in sales per hour. The last thing we want CSRs to do is think, ‘I have this customer who keeps ordering from me, but I have other customer calls to take, so I have to get off the phone.’ Let that rep keep talking to that customer as long as the customer is legitimately buying something.”
—Tim Holody, Seta Corp., source, “Measure Effectiveness by Sales, not Calls, Per Hour,” April 18, Catalog Success Idea Factory