More and more businesses nowadays are embracing call center reporting as a unique way to boost their bottom line. The idea of call center reporting is to identify and resolve the issues on a granular level so that robust strategies can be built to drive customer engagement.
This article will cover what call center reporting is, its benefits, the types of call center reports, and more.
Table of Contents
- What Is Call Center Reporting?
- Five Call Center Reporting Best Practices
- Top 8 Types of Call Center Reports
- Top Eight Call Center Reporting Metrics and KPIs
- Five Key Benefits of Call Center Reporting
- Difference Between Call Center Reporting And Call Center Analytics
- Call Center Reporting Takeaway
- Call Center Reporting FAQs
What Is Call Center Reporting?
Call center reporting involves transforming raw data from the Automatic Call Distributor (ACD), Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and Workforce Management (WFM) systems into meaningful reports, shedding light on specific call center metrics, to be discussed later. Once obtained, the data can be represented via graphs or charts to assess business performance over a defined period.
When generating these reports, it is crucial to use accurate formulas to calculate metrics, ensuring the gathered information is reliable and relevant. The reports must succinctly display the metrics, allowing managers to easily pinpoint areas for deeper analysis.
Thus, call center reporting provides managers with precise performance metrics and integrates other data streams, enabling the derivation of comprehensive, customer-focused metrics for the business.
Five Call Center Reporting Best Practices
- Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Use Real-Time Reporting
- Customize Reports for Different Stakeholders
- Implement Historical Trend Analysis
- Establish Regular Reporting and Review Processes
To maximize the effectiveness of your reporting efforts, you should:
1. Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Start by identifying and defining the most relevant KPIs for your call center. Although we’ll discuss them in detail below, these could include metrics such as:
- Average handling time
- First call resolution
- Customer satisfaction scores
- Agent productivity
- Call abandonment rate
Align your KPIs with your business goals and ensure they provide meaningful insights into the performance and success of your call center.
2. Use Real-Time Reporting
Implement real-time reporting capabilities to monitor call center performance as it happens. Real-time dashboards and alerts allow you to track metrics, identify emerging issues, and take immediate action. This helps you address any problems on the spot and maintain service levels consistently.
3. Customize Reports for Different Stakeholders
Tailor your reports to the needs of different stakeholders. Agents, supervisors, managers, and executives may require different levels of detail and specific metrics. Provide reports that are clear, concise, and relevant to each stakeholder group. This ensures that the right information is delivered to the right people, enabling them to make informed decisions and take appropriate actions.
4. Implement Historical Trend Analysis
Analyze historical data to identify patterns, trends, and insights. By comparing performance over time, you can track progress, identify seasonality or recurring issues, and make data-driven decisions. Historical trend analysis helps you set realistic goals, forecast call volumes, and allocate resources effectively.
5. Establish Regular Reporting and Review Processes
Set up a regular reporting cadence and review process to ensure ongoing monitoring and improvement. Schedule weekly or monthly meetings to review call center performance, share insights, and discuss action plans. Encourage feedback from stakeholders and adjust reporting as needed. This iterative process allows you to continuously refine your reporting practices and optimize call center operations.
Top 8 Types of Call Center Reports
There are eight different types of call center reports, and these are:
- Agent Activity Report
- Agent Availability Report
- Call Abandon Report
- Call Detail Report
- Call Direction Report
- Inbound Call Summary Report
- Queue Activity Report
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) Report
1. Agent Activity Report
The agent activity report offers information about all the call center agents. Managers can utilize this information to ensure that the agents execute their assigned tasks.
The agent activity report comprises historical data and other information regarding the daily output of the agent. It is, therefore, also called the agent detail report. The report includes statistics like:
- The number of incoming calls
- Total handle time for those calls
- Average handling time
- Shortest and longest handle time
2. Agent Availability Report
The agent availability or status report shows the individuals’ names and user IDs along with the ACD state. The report states how long an agent has been in each state. Some of the ACD states are:
- Available
- Busy
- Signed out
- Unavailable or idle
- Break
- Wrapping up
These reports are also called historical reports or trace reports, and they are used to see when an agent signs in and signs out. This helps in evaluating schedule occupancy and adherence.
3. Call Abandon Report
This report shows the percentage of abandoned inbound calls and details of the time before abandoning. Some reports can include additional details like the average wait time before abandoning a call or the longest a customer waited before they left a call. This helps in identifying gaps and evaluating where most customers were lost.
4. Call Detail Report
A call detail report shows:
- The start and end times of a call
- How long it was in the queue
- Caller's details
The report also presents:
- The caller ID
- The total hold times
- How long the call lasted
- When precisely the call took place
You can use this report to get an overview of the escalations or cross-check the discrepancies in claims by a customer or an agent. This report holds high value for the quality assurance team as well. The experts can track down and monitor the poor performing agents, defective knowledge management systems, and training opportunities. The goal is to enhance agent productivity.
5. Call Direction Report
A call direction report or call transfer report points to the number of calls made or received across a specific direction or channel over a certain period. This helps you understand the demand of the call center.
There are three directions, much like in an answering service:
- The total number of inbound calls received
- The total number of outbound calls made
- The internal calls to the other departments
Additionally, the total, average, and longest call durations can also be viewed in this report.
6. Inbound Call Summary Report
This is the time interval report. It comprises statistics for all the inbound calls to the call center over a period such as a week or a month. As such, it includes data such as:
- Total calls
- Answered calls
- Abandoned calls
- Talk time
- Agent’s speed of answering the call
This report also acts as a base for call center forecasting. For instance, mapping the call arrival pattern in a day can enable you to identify the expected call volume or the peak hours.
7. Queue Activity Report
The queue activity report gives insights into customer behavior while waiting in different queues within a set time. This report also includes the number of calls handled across each queue. You should ideally look at the key metrics, such as the longest and average wait times before the agents answered a call.
8. Service Level Agreement (SLA) Report
An SLA is an agreement between the call center and the client, containing the required service standards. Usually, in most call centers, 80% of calls need to be answered in 20 seconds. The SLA report lets managers check how and why the SLA was breached. SLA offers further insights into gaps apart from real-time monitoring and dashboards.
Top Eight Call Center Reporting Metrics and KPIs
Here are some of the top call center metrics and KPIs to consider:
- Average Handling Time (AHT): Measures the average time it takes for an agent to handle a customer call from start to finish. It includes talk time, hold time, and after-call work.
- First Call Resolution (FCR): Measures the percentage of customer issues or inquiries resolved in a single interaction without the need for follow-up calls.
- Call Abandonment Rate: Measures the percentage of callers who hang up or abandon their calls before reaching an agent.
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Measures customer satisfaction based on post-call surveys or feedback. It gauges the customer's perception of the service received and their overall experience. CSAT can be measured through surveys, ratings, or feedback forms.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures customer loyalty and the likelihood of customers recommending your call center to others. It is based on a scale from 0 to 10, with respondents categorized as promoters, passives, or detractors.
- Agent Utilization: Measures the percentage of time that agents are actively engaged in call-related activities. It considers talk time, after-call work, and other productive tasks.
- Schedule Adherence: Tracks how well agents adhere to their assigned schedules. It measures the percentage of time agents are available and ready to handle calls as per their designated shift.
- Call Transfer Rate: Measures the frequency of call transfers from one agent to another or between departments.
Five Key Benefits of Call Center Reporting
- Improves Customer Service
- Refines Agent’s Performance
- Optimizes Costs
- Supports Forecasting and Resource Planning
- Identifies Improvement & Cost Optimization Opportunities
Here are some of the primary benefits of reporting for your call center operations:
1. Improves Customer Service
Customer experience influences customer feedback and retention, revenue, sales, the center’s reputation, and more. Real-time call center reporting helps track customer success, demands, and sentiments. Getting an idea of why your audience reacts the way they do will let you keep customers happy. It will also encourage them to keep supporting your business.
2. Refines Agent’s Performance
Call center reporting can be used to evaluate the interaction between the agents and the customers and whether they adhere to company guidelines and overall success. You can also ensure that your agents are meeting the set goals by using daily, weekly, or monthly reports to measure the critical KPIs.
Moreover, if there is an operation-wide issue, you can use these reports to check if the agents need access to more training and tools. Sometimes, the problem lies with the system, which can also be detected.
3. Optimizes Costs
Keeping a call center operational is a challenging task. It is impossible to investigate each area of the center, especially offshore BPO, to identify small ways to save costs. On the other hand, call center reporting provides insights to streamline the work from top to bottom.
For instance, if there are too many steps in the call flow, you can simplify the process to save time and effort. One must remember that overlooking the small inefficiencies often leads to considerable costs over time.
4. Supports Forecasting and Resource Planning
Call center reporting provides data on call volumes, peak hours, and customer trends, enabling accurate forecasting and resource planning. Managers can analyze historical data to determine staffing requirements, optimize schedules, and ensure adequate agent coverage to meet customer demands. This way, businesses can minimize wait times and improve service levels.
5. Identifies Improvement & Cost Optimization Opportunities
By analyzing call center reporting data, managers can identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas of unnecessary expenditure. This insight helps in streamlining processes, optimizing workflows, and identifying cost-saving opportunities. For example, identifying frequently asked questions and developing self-service options can reduce call volumes and lower operational costs.
Difference Between Call Center Reporting And Call Center Analytics
Most often, call center reporting and call center analytics are used interchangeably.
Call center reporting can be considered the first step of analytics. The report contains data that helps you derive meaningful insights to drive performance. However, they are not the same.
The following is a detailed comparison:
- Call center reporting turns raw data into simplified summaries to better understand the call center’s performance. In comparison, call center analytics identifies the trends and patterns in the report and offers actionable insights.
- Reports give you data but require agents to ask questions like ‘how’ and ‘why.’ Analytics shows you the reasons behind specific problems.
- Reports highlight the latest calling campaign showing lower customer engagement, whereas analytics point out why the hit rate was low.
Call Center Reporting Takeaway
Tracking call center data is crucial but to make proper sense, depicting this data in an understandable form is even more important.
And call center reporting is precisely that.
With the assistance of a good call center reporting tool, or even by emlpoying an outsourced call center company, businesses can track the entire call center performance and enhance customer experience while meeting strategic goals with data-driven decisions.
Call Center Reporting FAQs
1. How do you write a call center report?
When writing a call center report, you should first define the purpose of the report as well as the scope. Then, gather data using call center reporting tools to access and extract the data effortlessly, efficiently, and accurately.
Once you have all the data, analyze it to discover trends, patterns, and possible areas of improvement. Structure the report and present the findings, provide recommendations based on your analysis, and summarize the key findings. If needed, distribute the report to relevant stakeholders, such as call center managers, supervisors, or executives.
2. What are the elements of a call report?
Typically, a call report includes the contact information of the customer or caller, the date and time of the call, a summary of the call as well as call details, the customer's issues, concerns, or questions raised during the call, actions taken by the agent or the call center to address the customer's issues, and the resolution of the call.
In some cases, a call report might include any follow-up actions required, additional notes relevant to the call such as details about the customer's demeanor, specific challenges faced during the call, or any important context that may aid in future reference or analysis. Sometimes, agents provide their own feedback. If your call center records calls or assigns reference numbers, you can also include call recordings or reference numbers for easy retrieval or reference in the future.
3. What is the difference between call center reporting and call center analytics?
Most often, call center reporting and call center analytics are used interchangeably. Call center reporting can be considered the first step of analytics. The report contains data that helps you derive meaningful insights to drive performance. However, they are not the same.
The following is a detailed comparison:
- Call center reporting turns raw data into simplified summaries to better understand the call center’s performance. In comparison, call center analytics identifies the trends and patterns in the report and offers actionable insights.
- Reports give you data but require agents to ask questions like ‘how’ and ‘why.’ Analytics shows you the reasons behind specific problems.
- Reports highlight the latest calling campaign showing lower customer engagement, whereas analytics point out why the hit rate was low.
