First Call Resolution Rate – How to Measure it The Right Way

Measuring First Call Resolution (FCR) precisely is not an easy task. The good thing is, customers don’t care if or how you measure FCR, they just want you to achieve it.
However, this doesn’t mean measuring FCR isn’t important, so don’t sweep it under the rug just yet. By getting the exact metrics for your FCR, you will find out if you achieved it and how good are your call agents at achieving it. You know, the “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” thing. But as we’ve said in the beginning – it is not an easy task, so most managers prefer to ignore this important metric and concentrate on some other things. A mistake that makes the difference between successful managers and mediocre managers.

FCR measuring methods

Among the various methods are:

–           Repeat-call tracking – this means tracking whether or not a customer will contact your customer service department a second time after the initial call, with the same issue. Although it is a very useful and quite simple tool to measure FCR, repeat-call tracking isn’t very exact on its own, because some customers might not contact your call agents second time, even if the issue still exists. They might contact your department via email or through the website, or they just might contact the competitors out of sheer frustration;

–          Post-call surveys – these surveys are conducted immediately after a call (via email or live surveyor). Their purpose is to receive information whether or not the customer’s issue has been taken care of completely. This is a very customer-centric tool that can also give a deviation from the real results when used on its own. For example, not all customers like to complete surveys and most of them will refuse to do so.

–          Quality monitoring – this is done by a special team that monitors all the calls and marks them either resolved or unresolved and confirm if it is the first or second call of the same customer. However, this method leaves out one very important thing – the customer’s perspective. Only the customer really knows if their issues has been resolved or not, while the quality monitoring is just a judgment call.

So, although these three methods seem kind of incomplete on their own, they work as a charm when combined the right way.

FCR improvement methods

In addition to using the aforementioned measurement methods (at least two of them combined), most companies conduct a root cause analysis to gain information on why FCR is or isn’t achieved. With such data in mind, the companies start improving their FCR with some of these methods:

–          Educating your agents about the importance of FCR;

–          Training your agents to effectively resolve issues;

–          Empowering agents to improve FCR rate.

Implementing all this in your call center’s work will present your agents with the opportunity and tools to identify and resolve problems with the FCR rate and also suggest methods to further develop and improve the measuring and achieving of FCR.

And if you need a hand with your First Call Resolution rate, but you don’t have an in-house customer service department – give us a call, we know exactly how to help you.