Talkdesk has released findings of a new report that has given a fascinating insight into contact centre metrics, with the average talk time increasing 13%, hold time by 71% and speed of answer plummeting 1.6% to less than 8.5 seconds.
The global contact centre KPI benchmarking report, which presents benchmarks for five handpicked contact centre performance metrics applied to a wide range of industries, company sizes, and locations to inform critical business decisions, also revealed the number of permanent remote workers surged to 86% last year.
The report reads: “2020 was a more demanding year than we ever could have expected. The global repercussions of COVID-19 permanently changed the way we behave, work, and think about the future. And the dust hasn’t settled yet: countries are still healing from the direct or indirect socioeconomic effects of pandemic control measures. But turbulence is also transformative. And together, we did our best to adapt.
“To adapt means making something suitable for a new use or purpose and adjusting to new conditions. For businesses, adapting means transforming customer experience (CX) strategies and optimising operations while dealing with countless competing priorities and trade-offs.”
It adds: “In the wake of the pandemic, increasing digital adoption and growing competition are fueling customer emancipation. There’s an opportunity to embrace the power of data to face these new complexities. To be better in an ever-changing economic climate, Talkdesk believes in benchmarking as a priority of contact centre strategy. Leveraging benchmarking and data hubs to enhance performance and productivity is crucial to deliver a better way to great customer experience.”
According to Contact Babel, just 13% of agents were permanent remote workers before the pandemic hit in March 2020.
But by June, lockdown saw that figure sky rocket to 86%, according to the Talkdesk Business Continuity Survey. Adding to that, more than a quarter of Talkdesk customers (27%) indicated they had shifted to a work from home setting and intend to remain remote for the foreseeable future.
Contact centre benchmarking is a structured, systematic process of continually identifying, examining, deploying, and reviewing best practices to gain and maintain competitive advantage.
The data represents the average performance of a sample size of over 2,200 clients from a wide range of industries and across six continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America.
