The Importance of Call Centers as the Face of Your Brand
A call center team is quite literally the hub of consumer-facing interactions—which means, that it’s the face of your brand in ways that matter most. Whether handling outbound or inbound customer calls, a call center is the first (and sometimes the only) touchpoint an existing or potential client will have with your dealership. This makes it incredibly important that a call center is functioning as effectively as possible. As TechTarget explains: “Many consumers stay with a brand because of the products it offers, but the most successful companies build long-term relationships through effective customer success programs.”
It stands to reason that having a strong system in place to assess and improve the effectiveness of your call center is just as valuable as any other aspect of your business model. As TechTarget explains, ‘Customer success metrics refer to quantitative and qualitative measures that help organizations understand how effectively their customer success teams maintain and grow customer relationships.” These metrics, in turn, deliver insights into how well businesses support their customers, via a dedicated customer success manager or a scalable support model.
In fact, Nextiva says, “Since call centers act as the voice of their client’s brands in many customer interactions, these metrics offer vital insights. By regularly monitoring metrics, you can spot potential issues that may lead to poor customer experiences and high churn rates.”
Key Elements of Successful Customer Service: Lessons from Southwest Airlines
Take Business.com’s assessment of Southwest Airlines’ customer service successes as a case-in-point example. “Over the years, Southwest Airlines has maintained high ratings among customers, even amid a global pandemic and overall declines in passenger satisfaction,” the website explains. Here are the three key elements of their success:
- Southwest offers multiple avenues for customer support. Customer experience is no longer just an in-person interaction or a phone call. It’s now online, in live chat and more. In addition to multiple phone numbers for different customer service issues, Southwest offers live chat (via mobile app), email and a self-help resource center, allowing multiple touch points and opportunities to delight customers.
- Southwest adapts to meet customers’ evolving expectations. The airline invested over $2 billion to improve the customer experience. From improved real-time travel communications to bag tracking to bolstered self-service options, Southwest proactively meets passenger needs to make traveling more convenient and comfortable.
- Southwest empowers employees. Southwest takes care of its employees, which, in turn, helps employees take care of its customers. Providing robust financial and wellness benefits and ongoing career development allows Southwest’s team to perform at its best and effectively support its customers.
Top Metrics to Measure and Improve Call Center Effectiveness
But with tons of possible specific metrics to analyze, it’s easy for the valuable information to get lost in the shuffle. We’ve combed through the noise and gathered a focused list to get your dealership started. Here, the top eight from our research:
First Contact Resolution Rate. Most primarily, consider the simple dichotomy of the question, is my customer’s issue being resolved on their first call? Ideally, this rate will be very high, indicating that your call center team is well-trained and effective in their problem solving for customers on inbound support calls. According to Nextiva, the top call centers can exceed an FCR rate of 90% or higher.
Customer Effort Score. A CES is an indicator of how hard a customer must work to solve problems or address any questions they have when working with a call center. A good CES will reflect a call center team that takes on much of the work for its customer, decreasing frustration potential on the customer side.
Customer Lifetime Value. The total revenue value a particular customer brings to your business in aggregate over time. This includes repeat purchases, return future visits and will increase according to a customer’s satisfaction with the customer-facing call center communications.
Customer Satisfaction Score. A self-explanatory metric, this one is best analyzed via survey (the number of customers who indicate a positive response / total number of survey respondents = the CSAT). The higher the score, the better the center!
Net Promoter Score (NPS). As TechTarget explains: “The net promoter score (NPS) sheds light on the customer’s feelings toward the brand and its products or services.” This measure of customer satisfaction can be a decide how satisfied customers are as they interact with a business. Customers who have a high NPS score have a greater chance to repeat purchases.
Churn Rate. Just as satisfaction is a KPI for dealership-customer interactions, so is the lack thereof. The customer churn rate determines the number of former clients who no longer choose to use a dealership or engage with a service, indicating a lack of potential CFL.
The final two metrics, average handling time and average speed of answer are both employee-facing metrics, meaning they reflect the efficiency of a given call center employee, or the team on the whole. This can have large implications for areas of potential learning and increased training, and the staffing number accuracy in place. Properly understanding the strengths and growth opportunities of a call center workforce is key to maximizing efficiency and lowering costs.
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