Hi

Can someone please assist to how do we monitor/track/evaluate First Call resolution ? The whole process sounds very facinating but quite difficult to monitor. Any advice please ??

Hi Dicken

You are right. This is a facinating topic and one that is generating a great deal of interest at the moment due to the significant cost savings and customer experience benefits that can be achieved with an increase in FCR.

There are a range of methods being used to gather FCR data for voice calls at present. You will need to evaluate which methods are the best fit for your business. Try to incorporate at least one method which capture the customer's view on whether FCR was achieved.


Agent Records Outcome:

The simplest method is to have the Agent record the call outcome in a wrap code for example. The drawback here is that the customer view is not captured and if the Agent is incentivized or measured on achieving FCR then they may present a biased view of the call outcome.


Agent Asks Caller:

An extension of the previous approach is to have the Agent ask the caller: 'Did we resolve your issue today?'. This doesn't remove the risk of an agent misrepresenting the call outcome but it does attempt to take the customer's view into account.


Call Quality Monitoring:

An internal quality monitor or 3rd party organization reviews a sample of calls to determine whether FCR was achieved and an enterprise FCR score is derived from this sample. In a recent ICMI survey on FCR practice this method was found to be the most widely used for tracking FCR.

This is a labor intensive process and the sample based nature means a complete picture cannot be achieved. This method also fails to take the customer's view into account.

Customer Survey:

This involves conducting a post call or call-back survey which can be automated (IVR) or carried out by a resource other than the agent who handled the call. This is very customer-centric but, by the very nature of surveys, is unlikely to provide wide ranging coverage so suffers from the same sample problems as the previous approach.

CRM/Case Management System Repeat Call Analysis:

Businesses that use a CRM or Case Management System to track customer intercations can analyze the data in these systems to see how many times a customer called on a particular issue within a specific timeframe to determine FCR. Consideration should be given the timeframe
used for analysis - how long after an issue is considered closed can you be confident that it is completly resolved? Another issue with this approach is that it fails to capture the caller who calls bak via another (unmeasured) channel or
who takes their business elsewhere.


I hope this helps get you started on your journey to achieving an increased FCR rate. Once you know how to measure it, the next step is to determine how to improve it. That's another story.

Good luck!

Technical stuff...but a great one.

Thanks for the feedback. I hope i try to implement some of this and see where it takes me.

James does gives a very good list of ways to try to measure FCR, each with their attendant problems.

I think a better method is to count the number of repeat calls. By definition if you have no repeat calls then you have 100% FCR. Also you can more accurately count them. An agent has no reason not to mark a call as a repeat call since that could not be perceived as their fault.

In addition the agent often doesn't even need to ask if the call is a repeat call since the caller will often start with "I called yesterday/last week and..." or "Last time I called..."

Repeat call counting is also much cheaper than all that surveying and CRM tracking.

I disagree with your point slightly in so much that if you do not have repeat calls it may be that the customer has taken their business elsewhere and therefore will never call back.
CLI reporting will certainly give a view but will not explain why some customers call more than once in a given period anyway.
It may help if there was a standard definition of what FCR is so that everyone measures in the same way over the same periods etc. FCR may be out of the hands of an agent and may be in the domain of the caller for eg, also should abandoned calls be included in the FCR figure or is it only when the caller is connected?

Thoughts?

Steve,

I do take your point, up to a point, but let us break it down a little.

When I refer to counting repeat calls, I mean across the business. In this quite wide context if there are fewer repeat calls then and the levels of business (revenue, sales or what have you) remain at the same level then I would take that as a good sign. Of course if you have a low number of repeat calls and business is going down and in fact people are switching to other companies or stopping their service then that would indicate that your customers are at the end of their tether and a jumping ship because your service is so bad.

But most people are actually quite tolerant and they will call again before moving company. If you ordered a product to be sent and it didn't arrive, I would call at least twice to enquire where my product was before cancelling my order and buying from somewhere else.

In an individual case it may be very difficult to tell why a customer didn't call again. Perhaps they did go somewhere else, but this depends on the service. E.g. a mobile phone customer can't move without requesting the code to take the phone number with them. And you would need to contact the business to cancel your veg box delivery.

As for a standard definition of FCR, I'm not sure it is necessary. Whatever definition works for each company is fine. Any of the ones that James lists or my repeat call count is workable. The important thing is that what is measured gives insight into the system and points the way to action that improves the system, processes and thus the delivery of value to the customer.

The real reason that I quite like a count of repeat call count is that I think it does point to improvements (why do customers call again -> stop doing the things that make them do that) it is easy to gather the data, it doesn't depend upon complicated and expensive CRM solutions which are unnecessary and the agent has no reason to cheat the figures.

As for abandoned calls, you could debate it either way but I would incline toward keeping it simple. Once they are connected is it a repeat call? Then improve the system to reduce the repeat calls, you will have more happy customers, fewer calls to deliver the same customer value and then more capacity in the call centre so fewer abandoned call because agents will be more available to answer the first time calls coming through rather than dealing with the repeat calls.

Hope that is clearer.

Best,

Rob