Call Centre Benchmarking 101

Call centre benchmarking is the process of measuring your organization’s outcomes against its own historical performance – or against your competitors’ performance.

Benchmarking is a critically important tool for business leaders who want to improve their contact centre outcomes and retain engaged employees who are excited about assisting your customers.

Measuring how well your team is performing on a regular basis can help you identify areas where you have the opportunity to improve and help you set realistic goals.

In this article Meg Monk explains the fundamental aspects of contact centre benchmarking.

Types of Call Centre Benchmarking

In general, there are two types of benchmarking:

Top Call Centre Metrics and KPIs

There are lots of call centre metrics you could use to measure your performance, and various leaders throughout your company will likely be interested in different types of data.

For example, your executive team will want strategic metrics and KPIs to build the business case for things like department budgets and headcount.

Contact centre managers, on the other hand, might be more interested in data like Average Handle Time and First Call Resolution, as those metrics are directly tied to their performance.

To learn more about what metrics can help measure Customer Experience (CX), read our article: The Top 10 Customer Experience (CX) KPIs for 2023

Tips for Benchmarking Success

The most important key to successful call centre benchmarking is to tie your benchmarks back to your wider company goals or KPIs. It’s great to know your company’s Average Handle Time, but if that number doesn’t relate to a specific company goal, it becomes just another number.

“What you are going to find is that you have two or three key goals for which you can benchmark metrics, in order to gauge current performance and track it over time,” said Justin Robbins, call centre educator and evangelist at 8×8.

“By creating these goals, we can focus our energies on benchmarking the metrics that matter most, and measure the impact when we introduce new and alter current processes to improve performance.”

The second key to successful benchmarking is to start with what you know. Your own internal metrics, such as your current employee engagement rate, are much easier to find and track than your competitors’ metrics, and they’ll likely be more useful as you’re starting out.

It’s also much easier to improve on your own performance than it is to try to compete with another organization whose processes you’re not familiar with and can’t control.

Lastly, use competitive intelligence to help you set initial goals and parameters. Industry reports can help you compare your internal benchmarks against industry averages to help you get a better understanding of how your organization is performing overall.

Sponsorship opportunities within these reports can also be great opportunities for marketing and brand recognition.

Reports your organization may find useful include, industry white papers, the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CCaaS, and research on the Call Centre Helper website.

Common Benchmarking Mistakes to Avoid

There are several common pitfalls that organizations encounter when they begin benchmarking.

Setting Unrealistic Goals

The first and most obvious mistake is setting unrealistic goals the first time they benchmark their performance.

It’s great to be aggressive in your efforts to improve, but goals that are unattainable lead to employee burnout and dissatisfaction.

It’s great to be aggressive in your efforts to improve, but goals that are unattainable lead to employee burnout and dissatisfaction.

Contact centre goals and KPIs should be challenging and aspirational, but should also be achievable.

Only Comparing to Those Bigger or Smaller Than You

Secondly, only compare your organization to similar organizations when setting competitive benchmarks. Comparing your small 500-person company to a global organization with thousands of employees and limitless resources won’t help you meaningfully move the needle.

Focusing on competitors that are a similar size and in similar growth phases will be most useful and effective as you’re starting out.

Adopting Fear Tactics

Finally, avoid using benchmarks and KPIs as a fear tactic. If employees are stressed about losing their jobs if they fail to reach goals, they’ll lose motivation and engagement, leading to call centre attrition.

Instead, reward employees and teams for making progress toward departmental and organizational goals.

5 Essential Steps of Contact Centre Benchmarking

Congratulations! You now understand the basics of benchmarking and you’re armed with tips for success. You’re now ready to begin the process of measuring your call centre’s performance.

Here’s how to get started:

With thanks to Meg Monk

If you are looking for more great information on contact centre benchmarking and metrics, read these articles next:

• Contact Centre Benchmarking vs. Balanced Scorecard: Which Is Best?
• Are Your Team Leaders Too Busy Chasing Metrics?
• Call Center Metrics: Examples, Tips & Best Practices

Reviewed by: Megan Jones