There are two kinds of KPIs you could measure in a contact centre: real-time and historical. Historical metrics offer a mind-to-long term picture, helping you plan, tweak processes, and intervene with technology. But are you utilising real-time KPIs like longest waiting time, which may not be that valuable as a trends map, but could significantly incentivise agent performance on the floor?
Let us look at a few tips and ideas to gain from the “longest waiting” statistic – but first here is the definition of the term:
What Does the “Longest Waiting” Stat Mean in a Contact Centre?
“Longest waiting”, also called “longest wait time,” is a KPI that reflects the maximum possible time a customer would have to wait given current call volumes, agent availability, and call handling pattern. This is a real-time statistic, updating itself as your call volumes change and agents penetrate more and more of the incoming call queue.
Note: The longest waiting stat is relevant only for inbound contact centres looking to answer as many calls, as effectively as possible, within a given period.
Five Ways to Utilise the Longest Waiting Stat to Your Advantage
There are several ways that you can act on your real-time longest waiting metric to optimise agent performance:
- Expedite ongoing calls: A steadily increasing longest waiting time means that agents in a specific group or location are spending too much time on processing individual calls, at the cost of the next customer’s CX. Waiting time beyond a certain threshold can be considered an indicator that ongoing calls need to be expedited or transferred to a different agent group
- Increase agent involvement in calls: If there is a high volume of calls in the queue, but your longest waiting stat is surprisingly short, it means that agents aren’t spending enough time on each interaction. This will bring down the quality of service and negatively impact your CSAT scores. Initiate interventions like course-correcting the agent group or having a supervisor monitor conversations more closely
- Predict manager intervention: In addition to agents, contact centre managers must also keep a watch on the longest waiting stat. You want to maintain a steady balance between the number of customers in the queue and the wait time so that an uptick in one is reflected in the other. Observe if this balance is skewed (i.e., one variable rises while the other dips) so that a supervisor can step in on time
- Route calls more intelligently: There are specialised inbound systems that modify routing algorithms using the longest waiting stat as a determining variable. The algorithm can correlate longest waiting time for a specific call type with the longest idle time in that agent group to form the perfect match. This ensures that customers aren’t kept waiting, and agents are not left sitting idle
- Training agents to read metrics: You can empower agents to interpret vital KPIs like longest waiting time by providing sufficient training. This also paves the way for gamification, where you can put up the longest waiting stat and call queue numbers for different agent groups on a leader board and encourage healthy competition.
