24 call center KPIs you should be tracking
Measure what matters with data-driven strategies to boost efficiency, enhance customer experience, and optimize contact center operations.
Improving the efficiency and productivity of any call center begins with knowing where you stand. Only by assessing your current performance—and doing so effectively—can you identify the best route forward for better results. Call center KPIs or Key Performance Indicators help you do that.
KPIs provide quantifiable measures of everything from the effectiveness of your hardware and software to the tangible impact your call center has on customers. That’s how they help you get a holistic view of your performance and what you can do to improve.
If you’re wondering where to start with tracking KPIs in your call center, you’re in the right place. Let’s get into what KPIs are, 24 key ones you may want to track, and plenty more besides.
KPIs provide quantifiable measures of everything from the effectiveness of your hardware and software to the tangible impact your call center has on customers. That’s how they help you get a holistic view of your performance and what you can do to improve.
If you’re wondering where to start with tracking KPIs in your call center, you’re in the right place. Let’s get into what KPIs are, 24 key ones you may want to track, and plenty more besides.
What are call center Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?
A Key Performance Indicator (KPI, as mentioned earlier) is a value used to measure how effectively a business achieves its objectives. Businesses use KPIs for performance management and quality monitoring.
KPIs should be tailored to your business or organization’s specific needs. Tracking call center KPIs enable business leaders to gain valuable insights into company, team, and individual agent performance.
These findings can be used to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of your call center performance and highlight ways to improve customer experience (CX).
KPIs, therefore, are subtly different from call center metrics. Those are any and every measure of call center operations. KPIs are the key ones—hence the name—as related to the overarching goals of the center and the wider business.
Cloud contact center solutions like RingCentral RingCX are designed to make tracking your KPIs easy. With RingCX, you can measure your team’s success with pre-built reports and dashboards, as well as create and customize your own.
KPIs should be tailored to your business or organization’s specific needs. Tracking call center KPIs enable business leaders to gain valuable insights into company, team, and individual agent performance.
These findings can be used to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of your call center performance and highlight ways to improve customer experience (CX).
KPIs, therefore, are subtly different from call center metrics. Those are any and every measure of call center operations. KPIs are the key ones—hence the name—as related to the overarching goals of the center and the wider business.
Cloud contact center solutions like RingCentral RingCX are designed to make tracking your KPIs easy. With RingCX, you can measure your team’s success with pre-built reports and dashboards, as well as create and customize your own.
24 top call center KPI metrics to track
your team’s performance
So, now you know what a KPI in a call center is, the next question is which metrics should you pinpoint as being your Key Performance Indicators. Ultimately, it will depend on your center’s overall objectives and goals. However, the following are 24 examples of metrics that many call centers choose to track as their KPIs, and which may provide you with fruitful insights:
Average after-call work time is a metric used to determine the average amount of time an agent spends on post-call tasks and how much time should be allocated for this part of the job.
Call center managers should strive to keep after-call work time to a minimum to maximize the total time agents spend handling customer calls.
This metric can be measured in conjunction with overall agent occupancy rates to better balance agent workloads and reduce the possibility of burnout. If you’re concerned that your agents aren’t handling enough calls, ACW time could be a sensible choice as a KPI. What’s more, tracking it as such may suggest that adopting more to handle ACW tasks may be the easiest way to boost performance.
Call center managers should strive to keep after-call work time to a minimum to maximize the total time agents spend handling customer calls.
This metric can be measured in conjunction with overall agent occupancy rates to better balance agent workloads and reduce the possibility of burnout. If you’re concerned that your agents aren’t handling enough calls, ACW time could be a sensible choice as a KPI. What’s more, tracking it as such may suggest that adopting more to handle ACW tasks may be the easiest way to boost performance.
We mentioned occupancy rate above, and it deserves its place on our list of potential call center KPIs, too. A call center’s occupancy rate is the percentage of total time working that agents spend on call-related activities.
That means the proportion of the time they spend speaking to customers or leads and completing related after-call work (ACW). That’s as opposed to time spent on breaks or in meetings or idle time waiting for their next call to arrive. Call centers may choose occupancy rate as a KPI if they feel tough decisions about staffing or need to be made.
That means the proportion of the time they spend speaking to customers or leads and completing related after-call work (ACW). That’s as opposed to time spent on breaks or in meetings or idle time waiting for their next call to arrive. Call centers may choose occupancy rate as a KPI if they feel tough decisions about staffing or need to be made.
With this metric, call center managers monitor the average time an agent spends handling a single call. Armed with this information, agents can better understand how to manage high call volumes by knowing how much time is required for each call.
Choosing this metric as a call center KPI also helps managers to track agent performance and implement strategies that streamline customer support.
Average speed of answer or ASA measures how long it takes on average for calls to be answered in a specific time frame—I.e., each day, week, or month.
Call center managers use this metric to assess efficiency and determine how accessible agents are to callers. It includes caller wait times but doesn’t include any time spent navigating a call center’s system. Call center metrics and KPIs like ASA are more about assessing the efficiency of a center’s systems and operations, rather than performance of teams or individuals.
Placing callers in a queue for long periods is detrimental to customer experience. However, call centers receive a huge number of calls per day, and answering each one immediately isn’t always possible, especially during peak traffic hours.
To ensure caller wait times are kept low, call center teams must track the average time callers spend in the queue before their call is answered. This is a great way to determine whether your team’s service level aligns with your customer service objectives.
To ensure caller wait times are kept low, call center teams must track the average time callers spend in the queue before their call is answered. This is a great way to determine whether your team’s service level aligns with your customer service objectives.
This is another of our call and KPI metrics that’s quite similar to others we’ve already mentioned—particularly, the two discussed immediately above. Where FRT differs, however, is that it’s a potential KPI choice that can apply across communications channels and not just for phone calls.
FRT is the total time it takes from when a customer first starts to reach out to your business to when they receive an initial response.
In the case of a customer call, therefore, the FRT may be the total time they spend navigating your IVR queue and waiting on hold, before they first speak to an agent. If they reach out by email or live chat, meanwhile, it will be how long they have to wait between sending their message and getting an initial reply—even if that is only a confirmation of receipt of their query.
FRT is the total time it takes from when a customer first starts to reach out to your business to when they receive an initial response.
In the case of a customer call, therefore, the FRT may be the total time they spend navigating your IVR queue and waiting on hold, before they first speak to an agent. If they reach out by email or live chat, meanwhile, it will be how long they have to wait between sending their message and getting an initial reply—even if that is only a confirmation of receipt of their query.
Measuring call abandonment rate is crucial for customer-centric . This metric tells managers how many callers are disconnecting from the call before they speak to a human agent.
Customers often abandon calls if they incur long wait times due to being placed on hold. Although you might expect them to call back, a high abandon rate can cause frustration and have a damaging impact on your business reputation and customer retention.
Using this information, managers can address the reasons for abandoned calls to reduce hold time and prevent callers from dropping off before their issue is resolved.
This metric measures the total number of calls to a call center and typically draws data from the previous 30 days.
Tracking the number of inbound calls over the month can help managers identify patterns and trends to manage agent staffing schedules based on times of the day and days of the week where demand is highest.
Tracking the number of inbound calls over the month can help managers identify patterns and trends to manage agent staffing schedules based on times of the day and days of the week where demand is highest.
Not to be confused with average handle time, which has the same initials, average hold time is the total amount of time, on average, that callers spend on hold.
Unlike average time in queue, this doesn’t only mean while they’re initially waiting to speak to an agent. It also encompasses any other occasions they may be placed on hold. For instance, if they’re asked to wait while an agent seeks an answer for them or while they’re transferred to someone else.
As such, average hold time can help call center managers pinpoint issues with agent training, , and more. All with a mind to improve overall customer experience.
Unlike average time in queue, this doesn’t only mean while they’re initially waiting to speak to an agent. It also encompasses any other occasions they may be placed on hold. For instance, if they’re asked to wait while an agent seeks an answer for them or while they’re transferred to someone else.
As such, average hold time can help call center managers pinpoint issues with agent training, , and more. All with a mind to improve overall customer experience.
Average talk time is one of those call center metrics and KPIs that can be deceptively useful. At face value, it’s a very simple measure of how long, on average, an agent spends actually talking to customers on a call. Unlike AHT, it doesn’t include time the customer spends on hold or any ACW the agent must complete to resolve each query.
You get the average talk time for an agent, by taking the total time spent talking to customers and dividing that by the total number of calls. Where it comes in useful is in spotting both trends and outliers.
For example, you may find that an agent’s average talk time is around three minutes. However, there are some calls where they spend much longer—say, ten minutes—talking to callers. By digging a little deeper, you may find that those calls are all on a specific topic or relate to a certain type of query. Therefore, you’ve identified a specific area where some extra training for the agent could improve their productivity.
You get the average talk time for an agent, by taking the total time spent talking to customers and dividing that by the total number of calls. Where it comes in useful is in spotting both trends and outliers.
For example, you may find that an agent’s average talk time is around three minutes. However, there are some calls where they spend much longer—say, ten minutes—talking to callers. By digging a little deeper, you may find that those calls are all on a specific topic or relate to a certain type of query. Therefore, you’ve identified a specific area where some extra training for the agent could improve their productivity.
Not all inbound or are guaranteed to be successful—some will fail to connect. Call setup success rate (CSSR) is a metric that measures the percentage of total attempted calls that fail to connect. It is typically more pertinent to outbound call centers.
Measuring CSSR enables managers to understand and assess how many of their attempted calls are failing. If it’s a high proportion in an outbound calling scenario, it may suggest an issue with a center’s dialing software or with the database of contact numbers they’re calling from.
Measuring CSSR enables managers to understand and assess how many of their attempted calls are failing. If it’s a high proportion in an outbound calling scenario, it may suggest an issue with a center’s dialing software or with the database of contact numbers they’re calling from.
Transfer rate is another of our call center metrics and KPIs specific to inbound call centers. It represents the percentage of total calls received in your call center that are transferred to a different department or agent, at least once. Meaning, the issue is not resolved by the first touch agent.
As a KPI for call centers, transfer rate can highlight some important issues with your operations. For example, a high transfer rate may suggest that you need to adopt—or improve— in order to ensure callers reach the right agent at the first time of asking. Or, perhaps you need to invest more time and effort into agent training, so that every agent is able to handle more interactions in their entirety, without escalation.
As a KPI for call centers, transfer rate can highlight some important issues with your operations. For example, a high transfer rate may suggest that you need to adopt—or improve— in order to ensure callers reach the right agent at the first time of asking. Or, perhaps you need to invest more time and effort into agent training, so that every agent is able to handle more interactions in their entirety, without escalation.
Cost per call is an important call center metric that enables managers to monitor overall costs to ensure they don’t overspend.
Calls aren’t free. Call center software and equipment must get paid for and agent time needs to be reimbursed—tracking this metric and identifying it as a call center KPI helps to ensure these costs are kept under control.
This KPI allows managers to assess customer loyalty and satisfaction by asking customers about their experience. Typically, CES is determined by asking how the customer found their experience and to rate how easy it was to get the answer or resolution they needed on a scale (for example,, from one to five).
Customers might consider whether they had to endure a long waiting time, if their issue was resolved during the first call, or whether they had to call back. Ensuring your call center offers a quick response time and a low transfer rate will help keep customer effort down.
Agent effort score or AES is a natural companion KPI to CES. It measures how easy your agents find it to provide the necessary answer or resolution to each caller. Once again, you’d determine this score by asking agents to complete post-call surveys including a question with a numbered scale.
In the case of AES, agents have to consider a range of aspects. Things like whether they have easy access to information on the caller’s past interactions with the company and if they’ve been trained satisfactorily to know the answer to a caller’s question straight away.
Measuring CSAT provides valuable insights into overall call center performance. CSAT can also measure how an organization’s products or services live up to customer expectations.
Typically, this is another call center KPI and metric you measure by presenting the customer with a scale. You may, for instance, ask them “on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being not at all satisfied and 10 being very satisfied, how satisfied were you with the customer support you received?”.
CSAT rates indicate whether call centers are delivering high-quality customer support and experiences. Understanding what’s making customers happy and what isn’t allows managers to identify areas for improvement.
First call resolution (also referred to as first contact resolution in the case of contact center KPIs and metrics) rate is the percentage of customer calls or contacts that reach a successful resolution at the first time of asking.
That means the proportion of customer calls that agents resolve without transferring to another agent, escalating, or returning the call. This metric directly correlates to customer satisfaction, as customers expect their concerns to be dealt with effectively and efficiently.
That means the proportion of customer calls that agents resolve without transferring to another agent, escalating, or returning the call. This metric directly correlates to customer satisfaction, as customers expect their concerns to be dealt with effectively and efficiently.
NPS demonstrates how likely customers that reach out to your call center would be to promote your business to others—like their friends, family, or colleagues. It gives another indication of overall customer satisfaction, as only satisfied customers would recommend you to others.
Measuring NPS is similar to CSAT but is typically determined based on the question: “How likely is it that you would recommend this service/company to someone else?”
Customers answer on a scale of 1-10, with:
Measuring NPS is similar to CSAT but is typically determined based on the question: “How likely is it that you would recommend this service/company to someone else?”
Customers answer on a scale of 1-10, with:
- 9-10 being considered promoters,
- 7-8 passive, and
- 0-6 detractors.
You then take the percentage of promoters and subtract the percentage of detractors, to give an overall score. NPS enables businesses to use feedback relating to their call center to improve quality management and achieve higher call ratings.
This potential call center KPI measures the percentage of inbound calls that are met with a busy tone or call blocking. This might happen because there are no agents available or call queues configured, or the call center software cannot handle large call volumes.
However, as with many call center KPIs and metrics, you should take care to pay this figure a little closer attention. After all, you may want your software to block some calls—spam calls that would otherwise waste your agents’ time, for instance.
This is another important agent KPI to measure agent efficiency and performance in a sales-focused outbound call center. As the name suggests, it records how many successful sales each agent closes.
Tracking sales per agent enables managers to adjust targets and assess overall call center performance. For instance, if one agent is making significantly more sales than anyone else, they may be a natural talent to be nurtured. On the other hand, an agent making significantly fewer sales than their colleagues could need more focused coaching and training.
This outbound call center KPI goes hand-in-hand with the one above. It puts a monetary figure or value on each successful call. For instance, in the case of a successfully closed sales call that would be the amount the caller paid for a product or the value of their agreed upon contract or subscription.
Assessing revenue per call alongside sales per agent can give a more nuanced view of sales rep performance. For example, one rep may make 10 sales in a week, whereas another makes just five. If the revenue per successful call of the second agent is more than double that of the first, however, they’ve made their business more money.
Agent turnover rate is the rate at which your call center agents (or reps) leave—through quitting, being fired, retiring, etc.--and have to be replaced. The lower your turnover rate, the better for your call center for a number of reasons.
Firstly, a low turnover rate suggests that your agents are happier in their work and less likely to quit. It may sound glib, but happier agents are better agents, and the support they provide will be better as a result. What’s more, hiring and onboarding new agents is both cost- and time-intensive. Keeping and upskilling existing staff is better all around.
This final potential call center KPI isn’t as tightly focused on call center operations. Instead, it’s a broader, business-wide metric that’s still worth tracking in order to infer the level of service provided by your center.
Your customer churn rate measures the percentage of customers who stop using your products or services in a given period. Factors outside of the service offered by your call center will undoubtedly impact customer churn. A high churn rate, however, means you need to look at anything that may be driving customers away—poor customer support interactions included.
The importance of call center KPI benchmarks by industry
So, that’s our list of 24 top choices when it comes to call center KPI alternatives. The options that are right for your call center and your business will depend on your overarching goals and objectives. We’ll get to some of the benefits that choosing and tracking the right call center KPIs can bring in just a moment. First, though, let’s think about context.
By that we mean how to view the KPI data that tracking and analyzing your chosen metrics will deliver. For example, let’s say you choose to set average speed of answer (ASA) and call abandonment rate as two of your call center KPIs. With the right contact center analytics tools, you may be able to fairly easily discover that ASA across your call center is six minutes and average call abandonment rate is 5%.
So what? Or rather, what does that tell you? Not a lot in isolation. That’s where KPI benchmarks come in. You need to know what an acceptable or standard ASA or call abandonment rate is for call centers operating in your industry. That way, you have a frame of reference by which to understand your own results.
Let’s now say, then, that in your industry you find that ASA tends to be around three minutes and call abandonment rates approximately 2.5%. With that context, your data is far more illuminating. You can see that your call center takes longer than average to answer calls and sees a higher proportion of calls abandoned before an agent gets to them. Two facts which are likely to be related.
Given that, you’ll have a pretty good idea that you need to do something to shorten wait times for callers and, therefore, improve your abandonment rate. Perhaps you need to hire more agents, move some from manning other channels to answering calls, or tweak your routing rules. Whichever way you choose to go, you have an aim, and a way of measuring success.
Then, over time, you can start contextualizing your call center KPI data as against prior results. So, rather than benchmarking against industry standards, you can start assessing trends in your own center. How are your results changing over time? What’s improving and what’s not? To begin, however, industry call center KPI benchmarking is vital.
So what? Or rather, what does that tell you? Not a lot in isolation. That’s where KPI benchmarks come in. You need to know what an acceptable or standard ASA or call abandonment rate is for call centers operating in your industry. That way, you have a frame of reference by which to understand your own results.
Let’s now say, then, that in your industry you find that ASA tends to be around three minutes and call abandonment rates approximately 2.5%. With that context, your data is far more illuminating. You can see that your call center takes longer than average to answer calls and sees a higher proportion of calls abandoned before an agent gets to them. Two facts which are likely to be related.
Given that, you’ll have a pretty good idea that you need to do something to shorten wait times for callers and, therefore, improve your abandonment rate. Perhaps you need to hire more agents, move some from manning other channels to answering calls, or tweak your routing rules. Whichever way you choose to go, you have an aim, and a way of measuring success.
Then, over time, you can start contextualizing your call center KPI data as against prior results. So, rather than benchmarking against industry standards, you can start assessing trends in your own center. How are your results changing over time? What’s improving and what’s not? To begin, however, industry call center KPI benchmarking is vital.
Benefits of tracking the right call center KPIs
Once you’ve established your chosen metrics as call center KPIs and put those in the proper context, what tangible benefits can you expect to see? Here are just three broad and generalized advantages of effectively tracking the right call or contact center KPIs:
Improved customer satisfaction or conversion rates
One of the principal reasons for establishing and tracking call center KPIs is in order to improve the overall performance of your center. In the case of inbound call centers that means the service you offer customers and for outbound centers that means your success in converting leads.
With clear KPIs, you’re able to closely monitor performance and more easily identify areas for improvement. For example, perhaps a KPI pairing of CSAT score and FCR rate may reveal that both are lower than average for your industry in your call center. That gives you a clear route forward; you need to find ways to boost your FCR rate which, in turn, should boost CSAT scores.
Perhaps, you could introduce extra training for your agents so they can resolve more issues at first contact. Or, maybe you could tweak your call routing rules so that agents receive calls better suited to their individual skillsets. Either way, you can then track and assess the impact of those changes on your chosen KPIs, continually iterate, and achieve tangible performance improvements.
More accurate assessment of agent performance
In modern call centers, particularly virtual call centers where agents may be working from home, it’s not as easy for supervisors and managers to assess each individual’s performance. If this is a concern for your business, setting and tracking the correct call center KPIs can help.
Let’s say, for instance, that you run an inbound customer service focused call center. You might be concerned that one of your virtual agents isn’t performing as they should be and that they’re taking too long to resolve customer issues. By assessing AHT and FCR rates for that agent, you can get a clearer and more accurate picture of their performance.
In that scenario, perhaps you find that their AHT is around 12 minutes, which is double that of the average in your call center. That probably explains why you were worried about the agent’s performance in the first place. However, by looking at FCR rate, too, you may then find that the agent’s is 90%, which is also double that of the average in your call center.
What that combination of data suggests is that the agent takes longer over each interaction but, in doing so, delivers better results for callers. This is a simplified example, of course, and further context—such as types of interactions handled and more—is needed in practice. It’s a good demonstration, however, of how tracking the right KPIs can give a more comprehensive picture of agent performance in a call center.
Greater control over costs
Tracking call center KPIs can also help you identify areas of improvement when it comes to spending. That may mean you can pinpoint potential cost-savings and ways to better use the resources available to you.
For example, perhaps by tracking average time in queue and benchmarking the results within your industry, you find that your callers are having to wait longer than they should. However, you also track your occupancy rate and see that agents are spending sufficient time on call-related tasks. It’s not a case, therefore, that your agents are sitting idle rather than helping customers.
Instead, you then find that average after-call work (ACW) time in your call center is very high. Agents are being kept from their next calls by having to complete lots of data entry and other tasks. Armed with this insight, you may implement greater automation of ACW. Agents are then freed up to answer more calls, which is a more valuable use of their time, and will lead to greater productivity and cost-efficiency across the call center.
Tips for setting up a call center KPI dashboard
By now, you may well be thinking that you’re going to be swimming in loads of data by tracking a collection of call center KPIs. And you’d be right. You may also be thinking that you’ll never be able to make proper sense—and use—of it all. Fortunately, that’s where you’re wrong.
With a contact center solution like RingCentral RingCX, you can view and build call center KPI dashboards that make understanding and acting upon all that lovely data as simple as can be.
A dashboard, when it comes to call center KPIs, is an interface that displays useful data in an easy-to-understand way. Just like your car dashboard clearly displays things like speed, remaining fuel, and more, a call center KPI dashboard can also present a selection of metrics in one place.
Call center KPI examples for an effective dashboard
Let’s take a look at some examples of dashboards you may find useful to create and track in your call center—as well as the KPIs you could group together for each:
This dashboard example is similar to the one above but would assess average rates and scores across your call center. Call center KPI examples here may include:
- FCR
- CSAT score
- CES
- NPS
This call center KPI dashboard example is focused more on the effectiveness of processes, tools, and workflows than end results. It would be an alternative to help you assess efficiency and remove any blockers to call center productivity. Call center KPIs that may apply here include:
- Active waiting calls
- Call abandonment rate
- Percentage of calls blocked
- Call setup success rate
- Occupancy rate
Those are just three straight forward examples. With the right tool for tracking KPIs, you should be able to use, create, and customize an array of dashboards and reports to suit you.
Easily track call center KPIs with RingCentral RingCX
RingCentral’s RingCX cloud-based contact center solution provides businesses of all shapes and sizes with omnichannel routing (voice, messaging, video), workforce management tools, and detailed reports and dashboards to help deliver tailored customer experiences.
RingCentral can help you gauge the effectiveness of your customer service teams, too, by measuring agent performance, productivity, and overall customer satisfaction with a range of pre-built reports and real-time dashboards.
Here’s a look at some of the ways RingCentral can help you to enhance contact center performance:
1
Access pre-built reports to gain real-time insight into agent performance.
2
Monitor critical call center KPIs with real-time dashboards.
3
Increase agent productivity with a range of workforce management tools for service quality, scheduling, and real-time analytics.
4
Deliver tailored customer experiences while closely monitoring agent performance to ensure customer issues are solved quickly and effectively.
Call center KPI FAQs
You should assess and review which call center KPIs you’re tracking regularly—perhaps on a quarterly or even monthly basis. That way you can ensure they remain tightly related to your overall business goals, which will also be regularly changing. In terms of actually viewing and acting upon the data you collect, that should happen continually. There’s no “set and forget” when it comes to call center performance—you should be shooting for continual improvement.
KRA is another acronym you may come across in similar situations as you encounter KPIs. KRA stands for Key Results Areas. They are sets of overarching goals or objectives for a business. Your KPIs are the means by which you’d measure your progress towards achieving your KRAs.
Software solutions like RingCentral RingCX make it easy to visualize call center KPI data in real-time dashboards and customizable reports. These make the data more easily digestible, particularly for stakeholders and decision-makers not involved in the day-to-day of call center operations.
The short answer is that everyone should be interested in call center KPIs. From newly hired agents, through supervisors, and all the way up to CFOs and CEOs, call center KPIs are how you assess performance and ensure things are working as they should be.