Think about all the services you provide for your customers. Whether this is email support, social media engagement, or running inbound call center services, it is critical to your business that you are closely monitoring these services. KPIs (key performance indicators) are data points that can be collected to make sure that the services you are providing are effective. KPIs allow you to analyze different parts of your business to see where you are doing well and areas where you can make improvements. At the end of the day, the goal is to make your customers happy, retain loyal customers, and gain new customers.
There are so many different KPIs out there, so it can be difficult to know which ones to track. Come up with a plan about what you think the most important data points are to your business and begin to consistently track them. Once the data is collected, there is still more to do. Data means nothing without analysis. Take the time to look through the data, study what it means, and come up with a plan to make your business better and more successful than ever.
Call Center Services Volume by Day and Time
Call volume by day and time is a very important KPI for businesses that offer inbound call center services. In order to properly staff your call center, it is important to know the busiest times. Track when customers are calling. After a few weeks of consistent data gathering, you will be able to create a graph that shows which days and times seem to receive the most customer calls.
Based on this data, you may choose to add a few more call center staff to the work schedule during busy times while reducing the staff during slow times. It is also really important to see how your data changes based on factors like holidays or seasons. You might realize that you are busiest in the summer or during the Christmas season. This data will help you better plan for the following year, hiring more staff if necessary to handle influxes in calling.
Call Center Services Average Hold Time and Call Abandons
Two other inbound call center KPIs that should be tracked are the average hold time of the customer and call abandons. In an ideal world, your customers would never be put on hold. They would make their call, your staff would immediately answer, and all would be well. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. It is important to track how long customers are having to hold and also how many are abandoning the call. Also, track how long customers are holding before abandoning the call. If most customers are hanging up after two minutes of waiting, then it is crucial for your call center to be staffed well enough so that customers don’t have to wait more than two minutes.
Customer Conversion Rate
A customer conversion occurs when they buy something from you either online or in-person. The goal with conversion rates is to track customers who have taken certain actions. For example, if you send out marketing emails, track how many customers that opened the email went on to buy something. If you are operating an outbound call center, track how many customers you speak to that end up buying something.
Tracking the rate of customer conversions is a great way to understand if what you are doing is working. If you send out an email to customers and only 2 out of 1,000 recipients convert to a sale, then maybe you want to take a look at updating or changing your email strategy. If you make phone calls to 30 customers and 15 of them end up purchasing, this is a wonderful conversion rate and shows that your strategies are working.
Email Open Rate
Email is one of the most effective ways to market your company to customers. That being said, it is important that your emails are engaging and that customers are actually opening them. Mail providers can identify frequently unopened emails as junk. You do not want your marketing emails going into people’s junk folder! A great email KPI to track is email open rate. According to a study done by Mailchimp in 2019, the average email open rate is 21.33%. Keep track of how many people are opening your emails and compare it to this average. If your rate is much less than 21.33%, consider updating your email marketing strategy. If it is higher, you know that you are creating successful email campaigns.
KPIs = Better Decisions
KPIs are very important pieces of data that all businesses should be tracking and analyzing. Whether you provide call center services or email marketing campaigns to customers, it is crucial that you are tracking these strategies to make sure they are successful. Some important KPIs to start with are call volume by day as well as average hold time and call abandons for call centers. Conversion rate is always an essential number to calculate to see if your strategies are converting into customer purchases. Email open rate is important to track as email marketing is one of the most successful ways to reach customers.
KPIs will help show you where your company is successful and where you need to improve. It can guide you in creating better staffing and advertising practices. It may lead you to making the decision to bring on an omnichannel support services firm to help with customer support. At Millennial Services, we can provide customer support across numerous channels. We can also track KPIs so that you are still aware of how certain business strategies are playing out and provide you with the opportunities to make better decisions. For more information about our services, contact Millennial Services today.