Improving First Call Resolution (FCR)

Improving First Call Resolution (FCR)

First-Call-Resolution

First Call Resolution (FCR) is one of the most powerful and valuable metrics, because it serves as a KPI for customer experience as well as operational performance and efficiency. However, measuring FCR is challenging when it comes to customer perspective or whether their inquiry was resolved to their satisfaction.

But let’s see what exactly FCR is. According to the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), FCR is the percentage of initial calls that do not require any further contacts to address the customer’s reason for calling. Simply put – when the customer’s inquiry or problem is resolved in a single contact.

As a company that offers professional customer care and tech support services to clients, we pay a lot of attention to this important metric, thus being able to reach FCR rates of 92% on a project with one of the international leaders in Document Services, Digital Imaging, IT Services and IT Consulting. Additionally, we managed to decrease the last orders percentage from 40% to 2% and abandoned calls percentage to 2%, both being important factors in the process of FCR ratio improvement. Here are some tips

 

1. Properly structured processes – the most important factor for increasing FCR ratio is the clear process flow. Agents should have available information about the stages of the customer service processes and clear responsibilities. The customer service team should be well structured as a whole – customers should be able to contact the agent with the answer for their particular question on the first call. Additionally, a constant result analysis will help for identifying points of improvement in the processes. All of this can be easily achieved by a professional and proactive call center management team;

 

2. Staff training –  the good training program can affect FCR ratio in a positive way, quickly reducing the experience gap between new and experienced employees. Ongoing training courses and quality assessment can improve agents’ ability to provide first call resolution on a wide variety of call types, as well as give them the confidence and knowledge to handle more complex calls and tasks. Also, make sure your agents have all the tools to do their job properly – real-time access to information resources, customer data or a chat room, where they can receive immediate help if there is a need;

 

3. Call Routing and Proper Use of IVR – making sure that every service request is channelled to the most appropriate team for optimal resolution. Make it easy for the customer to contact the right employee for the job. If you use interactive voice response (IVR) unit, make sure the wording is clear and understandable (no company slang or abbreviations), and the selections are in optimal order;

 

4. Call completion – a very important thing is to give the customer the opportunity to make changes and updates on the situation after receiving the solution and agree that the call is indeed complete and a resolution is reached. Agents should notify the customers that the details of the problem are clear and understood, so that they would know their problem would be taken care of. Important part is the post-call data processing, which can help reveal recurring problems or speed up subsequent calls by the same customer;

 

By taking the right approach to improving first call resolution, you will be helping both your agents and your customers feel less frustrated and more satisfied with the use of their time.

 

How do you achieve 98% First Call Resolution Ratio? Share your experience with us or contact us to learn more about our approach.