For contact centre managers, service level is one of the key metrics you need to keep an eye on. It measures how many calls your agents are able to process in a given time period, striking the perfect balance between speed, and per-call engagement. Interestingly, higher isn’t always better with this KPI. That’s why you need to set clear service level objectives and equip agents to adhere to this standard as much as possible.
What is Service Level Adherence?
To understand the meaning of service level adherence, we have to first define service level objectives.
Service level objective refers to the percentage of total inbound calls contact centre agents should be able to answer within a predefined speed to answer threshold, over a time period such as one day, one month, or one year.
Let’s say you receive 200 inbound calls in a day, out of which you want agents to answer at least 170 calls before 20 seconds from the moment the call reaches your contact centre. Your daily service level objective will be (170÷200) x100|20 or 85|20, meaning agents must answer 85% of all calls within the 20-second threshold.
However, a variety of factors can bring down the actual service levels of your organisation. There may not be enough agents, leading to a delay when answering calls. Or, a technical bottleneck in your routing mechanism could be causing call drops. Agents could even be rushing through calls, overstepping the ideal service level objective, due to managerial pressure.
The discrepancy between the live service level and the intended service level objective indicates agents’ capacity for adherence.
4 Tips to Maximise Service Level Adherence
There are several tactics to help increase (or lower, depending on your adherence rate) service levels that you can adopt.
- Increase your occupancy rate: Occupancy rate tells you how much time agents are spending on work-related duties, including conversations, data entry, email follow-up, etc. A low occupancy rate means that agents have a disproportionate number of idle hours that could be routed to call handling
- Use demand forecasting: Predictive technologies can help you forecast demand so that you can plan for traffic spikes. By having a ready agent workforce to take care of peak periods, you can minimise call wait times and reduce the burden on agents to rush through calls
- Invest in agent engagement: Attrition is a major problem for contact centres, and every time you lose an agent, it is equal to lost opportunities. Even if you hire afresh, training efforts and time-to-reach-full productivity will increase the burden on your existing workforce. Agent engagement can help you reduce attrition and maintain a steady service level adherence rate
- Equip agents for first call resolution: Resolving customer queries at the first call will prevent unnecessary call-backs that add to your traffic volumes without generating value. Encouraging first call resolution also means agents will spend more time on each call, without rushing through
Finally, don’t forget to revisit your service level objective at regular intervals, adapting to the business environment.
