Agent performance

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Analyzing call center agent performance is critical for improving customer experience (CX), mitigating compliance risk, and driving revenue and customer retention.

Call center agent performance metrics and KPIs

The following are common examples of agent performance metrics around effectiveness, efficiency, and CX:

• Average handle time (AHT)
• First call resolution (FCR)
• Supervisor escalations rate (call escalations)
• Customer sentiment
• Dead air
• On-hold time (hold time violations)
• Mandatory compliance dialogues
• Empathy statements
• After call work (ACW)
• Customer verification

How to improve call center agent performance

Using speech analytics (for voice conversations) and contact center AI (for omnichannel analysis), every conversation an agent handles is analyzed for a variety of moments, and that analysis is delivered via agent performance reporting. 

At the organizational level, this allows teams to see what agents are performing well and which ones aren’t, often displayed in an agent performance dashboard. 

To improve agent performance, contact centers can use these insights to:

• Create analytics-driven coaching programs: backed by deep insights on 100% of calls, learning and development teams can custom-tailor coaching programs down to the individual agent and monitor their progress overtime.
• Coach with context: honing on on exact moments of a conversation, supervisors can have more impactful sessions with agents, backed by data rather than anecdotes.
• Utilize call center agent evaluation forms: by scoring the conversation on a wide variety of moments throughout the conversation, agents are able to see where they can improve and how the things they say can impact the overall conversation sentiment.
• Improve agent soft skills: intangible in nature, agent soft skills were hard to monitor. But with AI services, contact centers can pair customer sentiment with agent actions to see what soft skills agents are displaying, like empathy.
• Proactively mitigate compliance risk: by quickly identifying compliance violations as they happen, compliance teams are able to address compliance gaps before they grow out of control. 
• Maximize your internal knowledge base: with an infinite amount of topics and resources that can be included in an organization's IKB, extracting key findings and insights helps influence what's included, and what's making an impact on overall agent performance.
  

To monitor the success of these agent performance programs, contact centers look at the impact on the call center agent performance metrics listed above, and monitor improvement over time.