4 Omnichannel Metrics to Add to Your Dashboard

In the contact center industry, every organization wants to be data-driven. As a customer-facing company, having the numbers and metrics to support your business value is essential. But what we often have is far too much data and little to no action around it. For those looking to get a handle on how their customer experience is being qualified, we need to get rid of the kitchen sink mentality-don't throw in every metric. What matters is that your customers are happy, regardless of what contact channel they've chosen to use. Below are four metrics to add to our dashboards to measure against that goal.

Transfer Rate

A successful call or interaction often involves low effort by the customer. Your agent is the first line of defense when a customer engages with your company via any formal channel of communication. However, when calls need to be escalated, either because of improper training or structural deficiencies with how the customer care program is operated, the interaction could likely lead to frustration, low resolution, and low satisfaction. The higher an agent escalates an issue, the more costly the interaction becomes. Most call centers aim for 75% or higher as a metric for one contact resolution (Desmarais, 2018), but raising this metric is becoming more and more critical. Transfer rate shows the autonomy and resourcefulness of a company's lower level agents and is a metric to consider measuring as a barometer of effort, satisfaction, and resolution.

Customer Emotion Experience

Looking at the percentage of customers who felt their entire experience was perfect (top box response) when resolving their inquiry or problem is a great new measurement practice. For customers who described their emotion experience as perfect, the Net Promoter Score® was 79% (Desmarais, 2018). This is more useful than a metric like average handle time. The way the interaction was handled, versus simply the speed at which it was handled, tells you more about the user. If their customer emotion experience was high, then likely their faith had been restored to your brand, and they'll be likely to recommend your organization to their family and friends.

Join Neal at ICMI Contact Center Expo, where he'll deliver session 501: Using Customer Feedback as a Strategic Measure. 

Customer Experience Greatness

Customer experience greatness is an important metric to report on an ongoing basis. To take your customer service from good to great, conduct post-contact surveys for those who have been assisted by your agents on any available channel. This will help you see trends in the performance of your agents. This is also a metric your agents will want to see; the data will allow them to grow with the feedback and will enable you to compare how each customer service channel is performing for the same type of contact reasons.

Net Retention Score

Agents need to understand how all metrics impact the brands they work on behalf of and this metric measures customers. Net retention score represents the percentage of those who will continue to do business with an organization. "Astonishingly, the majority of contact center managers either have no idea, or do not measure, whether or not they have retained customers as a result of their contact center experience and, therefore, have no idea of the organization's resulting revenue loss" (Desmarais, 2018). Any business knows the financial impact of gaining new customers, versus retaining existing customers; this should be a metric that is front and center on any omnichannel dashboard.

Overall, the metrics we add to our call center dashboards should be focused and well defined for our agents. We should choose to measure elements that allow us to understand user experiences. It's easy to get caught up in metrics like average handle time and first contact resolution, but there needs to be a more significant emphasis on what these metrics mean to our customers and our agents. If we can make sure that our employees are engaged and satisfied, in the same ways we strive for customer engagement and satisfaction, then we are setting goals successfully.