Top Five Business Practices for Improving FCR and CX
SQM Group has been measuring, benchmarking, tracking, and helping leading North American call center's improve First Call Resolution (FCR) and Customer Experience (CX) for over 25 years. We benchmark the FCR rate and evaluate business practices (e.g., people, process, and technology) with over 500 call centers annually. Listed below are the five most helpful business practices for improving FCR according to SQM clients:
- Management focuses on improving FCR
- Post-call customer surveying
- Focused FCR training (Agent new hire and ongoing training)
- Streamlining business practices through software applications
- Incorporating Csat/call resolution into the quality assurance program
The number 1 most helpful business practice for improving FCR and CX is 'management focuses on improving FCR'. SQM's viewpoint for whether or not management is actually focusing on FCR is when their FCR rate has increased and when Agents confirm that FCR and CX is management's focus.
SQM has been to many meetings where management has said that FCR and CX is their main focus; however, when their Agents are asked what the main focus of the call center is, many do not agree that FCR and CX is the focus. For example, when the FCR rate improved, management focused on applying the necessary people, process, and technology practices identified as business practices that needed to be fixed to improve FCR.
The number 2 most helpful business practice for improving FCR and CX is 'post-call customer surveying'. SQM clients use post-call customer surveying as the foundation for determining whether or not their call center has improved their FCR and CX performance. The Voice of the Customer (VoC) FCR external measurement method is considered the most accurate method for measuring and benchmarking FCR and CX.
External measurement lets the customer judge whether FCR took place; after all, their opinion is what matters the most. In most cases, a post-call phone or email customer survey method is used for external FCR measurement. In addition, the external FCR method uses a standardized measurement methodology so you can benchmark FCR against other call centers.
The number 3 most helpful business practice for improving FCR and CX is 'focused FCR training (new hire and ongoing)' for Agents. Classroom, e-learning, and on-the-job training provide agents with the necessary skills, knowledge, and abilities to resolve the call types they are responsible for handling.
The training is focused on how to resolve typical and tough calls using the necessary call resolution soft skills. Train all of your Agents on the Call Resolution Delivery Model. However, in many cases, SQM has found that most call resolution and Csat improvement typically come from first and second quartile call resolution performing Agents rather than from the lower quartiles.
The number 4 most helpful business practice for improving FCR and CX is 'streamlining business practices through software applications' to make it easier for the Agent to resolve customer calls. Since call centers are handling more complex calls, streamlining processes and software practices is truly a worthy initiative.
SQM clients who have improved their FCR because of a new software initiative have done so by focusing on improving FCR. Call centers are so complex that they require many different software applications to support agents handling calls to provide FCR and a great customer experience. The top three software applications that our clients have focused on for streamlining are unified desktop, customer relationship management, and knowledge management tool.
The number 5 most helpful business practice for improving FCR and CX is 'incorporating Csat/call resolution into the QA program'. Many clients have incorporated customer survey call resolution and customer satisfaction Agent results into their QA program.
Customer Quality Assurance (CQA) combines call compliance metrics, judged by a QA evaluator, and service quality metrics, judged by a customer via a post-call or email customer survey. CQA is based on the premise of letting the customer be the judge of their own experience when contacting an organization and is one of the best practices for driving improvements in the FCR rate.
Ranking of the Most Helpful Business Practices for Improving FCR
SQM agrees that any of the business practices in Figure 1 can improve FCR and CX performance. Furthermore, you can make an argument that our clients got it right for the top five business practices for improving FCR.
SQM's management rankings of the top five most helpful business practices for improving FCR are slightly different. Our top five are:
- Management focuses on improving FCR
- FCR goals and performance are communicated frequently
- Post-call customer surveying
- FCR/call resolution accountability at all levels
- Recognizing and certifying world-class Agents and supervisors
SQM management's top five most helpful business practices for improving FCR focuses on a VoC Agent and supervisor performance management system. SQM clients that are world-class FCR performing call centers' ranking of the top five most helpful business practices for improving FCR are the same or very similar to SQM's management ranking.
Figure 1: Ranking of the most helpful business practices for improving FCR
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