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When talking to managers about their contact center’s quality program I’ll often ask what they are currently doing to measure quality.
“Well, we generate reports each day that give us various quality metrics which we then track. Those metrics then go into a monthly quality report to senior management and are broken down by Customer Service Representative (CSR) and tracked for their performance management.”
“Great,” I’ll answer. “Can you give me an idea of the metrics you use?”
“Sure, Average Handle Time (AHT) and Calls Per Hour (CPH) are the primary ones, but then we also track After Call Work (ACW) and amount of time spent on the phone ‘available.'”
At that moment, I know that this manager has fallen prey to the “Metrics Deception.” So, here’s the deception. Each of the metrics mentioned, while important to track as they relate to the cost of doing business, are not “quality” related metrics. They are quantitative metrics (number of minutes, number of calls, amount of time, and etc.) but they tell you nothing about the quality of the interaction that took place between the customer and the CSR. For managers it is really easy to fall into the Metrics Deception because the reports and data off of the phone switch are easily generated, easily quantified and easy to track. When the Executive Vice President of Operations asks for a quality report, it’s easy to provide a nice chart showing that your “quality” efforts have reduced Average Handle Time by ten seconds which will translates into a net savings of dollars over the course of the fiscal year. Well done. Cost savings is good. Everyone is happy.
Well, not everyone is happy. The customers who got poor, rushed answers that didn’t resolve their question were not happy. The customer who got hung-up on while on hold by a CSR who was trying to reduce his AHT was not happy. The CSR who feels pressured into short-changing the customer for the sake of making their “quality” metrics look good on next month’s report is not happy.
If your “quality metrics” don’t correspond to your customer satisfaction ratings, then you might just want to double check that you haven’t been deceiving yourself into thinking that quantitative metrics are qualitative in nature.
