How To Improve First Contact Resolution

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First Contact Resolution

First Contact Resolution – Do you take customers for granted? If you do, it can cost you. Customers are your biggest asset. But if you’re losing them at an alarming rate, it could be because you’re taking them for granted. And that’s unforgivable. Your call center is your “store.” It’s also the face of your business. Often, an agent is the only employee that ever talks to a customer about a product or service.

And since this “relationship” is virtual, customers are only a phone call (or e-mail) away from doing business elsewhere.

A good way of making sure customers don’t leave is through first call resolution (FCR).

Impact Of First Contact Resolution

FCR impacts every aspect of your business.

Don’t believe it? Check this stat out.

Multiple industry studies show that the number of dissatisfied calls is 20% to 30% of your total volume.

This means that 20% to 30% of everything you spend in your call center is devoted to fixing up what you botched up the first time.

This can add up to a lot of money, taking money away from other areas.

Put another way, every time you fail to resolve an issue on the first call your customer will have to call you back.

From that moment on, everyone starts to lose.

Of course, some issues are too complex to be resolved on the first issue. Still, you should strive to resolve every possible issue on the first call.

Action Point: Make a list of repeat reasons why customers call back. Once you have the list, start thinking about how you can eliminate these reasons.

The Home Run Of Call Center Stats

Your FCR rate is the home run of call center stats. It affects almost every other key stat and metric in your center.

It also produces other benefits.

FCR reduces call volumes, improves business processes, and increases customer satisfaction. It also helps retain call agents.

More importantly, it boosts revenues.

Increasing your FCR rate by just 10% can lead to a 14% improvement in up sell ability—adding thousands each day to your bottom line.

The process of improving your FCR also identities common customer misconceptions, product/service issues, and problem areas unrelated to your contact center.

Improving Your First Contact Resolution Rate

Improving FCR involves process changes, call routing, agent training, and access to tools and information. Knowing what to change comes from good tracking and reporting. While the FCR rate is a backward-looking effort, it’s great at initiating forward-looking improvements.

A good FCR measurement process is invaluable.

It gets right to the root cause of problems, telling you what happened and under what circumstance. In doing that, it correlates details from several viewpoints—your customer, your agent, your call center, and your equipment.

Needless to say, improving your First Contact Resolution rate is imperative. Below are 10 things you can do to improve FCR.

  • Keep processes simple and honest.
  • Identify repeat contact reasons—then eliminate them.
  • Adopt an “every employee is responsible” philosophy.
  • Use social media to identify First Contact Resolution failures and why.
  • Focus on making small continuous improvements.
  • Keep in mind that time is critical for customers.
  • Install mechanisms for measuring First Contact Resolution and action improvements.
  • Remove one systematic repeat reason per month. Set a clock against this goal.
  • Get a full picture of First Contact Resolution by using a variety of measurement techniques
  • View tracking from the eyes of your customer

Keep in mind that your agents are the delivery mechanism for your business. As a manager, need to provide them with the tools and information to do the job properly. Make sure you do that.

Customers are your biggest asset. They’re the lifeblood of a company. But you can quickly lose them if you take them for granted. And that can be costly.

Improving your first call resolution rate increases productivity and efficiency, cuts costs, and improves customer satisfaction.

More importantly, it boosts revenues.

And everyone loves that.

Enlist the expertise of our outsourced service desk company, leveraging our proven experience in delivering top-notch tech support to small and medium-size companies. Reach out to our sales team to request a personalized quote tailored to your specific needs.



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