Operations: Two industry veterans share their insights on using Benchmarks & Best Practices

Kislik: That’s true. You have to consider your customer population. If you have a lot of older customers, they may be more prone to use the phone than the Net.

CS: Please name some common external benchmarks you see catalogers using.

Barry: We track all kinds of data, including call abandoment rates, percentage of calls answered in 20 seconds or less, e-mail turnaround time, calls answered per hour, how many e-mails handled per hour, average call time, call-to-order ratio, calls answered per square foot of the contact center, costs per order, cost of credit, cost per contact, cost per call, percent to net sales for major expenses such as indirect and direct labor, benefits, training, recruiting, telecom, occupancy, and much more.