First call resolution (FCR) is a huge call center metric, so it’s crucial for business leaders to know how to optimize it!
One of the most important metrics for any call center is first call resolution (FCR), which is also referred to as first touch resolution and first contact resolution.
FCR essentially is the overall percentage of customer service requests that are fully resolved during a caller’s first interaction with a company representative. This is such an important metric because about 70% of consumers say they’d consider switching brands after not receiving a satisfactory first contact response.
So FCR clearly is absolutely critical for any company’s overall success, and below we’ll be detailing the following:
- Why FCR is so important for your call center and/or business
- How improving FCR can improve your customer satisfaction
- How to improve your FCR from where it currently is today
What Exactly Is First Call Resolution, And Why Is It So Important?
FCR is when your team can resolve a caller’s questions/needs during their first call with your customer representatives. This means the customer will have no need to reach back out to your team a second time regarding their issue/question. So, FCR is the percentage of your business calls that are resolved with just one call.
FCR is something that should be continuously tracked by business teams, because it’s such an important metric that’s interconnected to other crucial indicators like user surveys, NPS scores, and online reviews. No other call center metric provides quite the same insights as FCR, because this one metric is a clear indication of your customer satisfaction and call center management.
A good FCR percentage is also an indication that your team is working efficiently, so FCR improvements are always a win-win situation for both customers and business leaders.
Common Benefits of First Call Resolution
Tracking your FCR metrics can offer all sorts of benefits to you and your business team, including:
Customer Retention
We’ve all gone through frustrating customer service experiences, and it’s no secret that poor customer service often leads to customers turning to similar competitors.
Around 96% of customers say they’re more likely to be loyal to a brand based upon their customer service impacts, and tracking your FCR can help you monitor just how well your team is doing in terms of keeping your customers happy.
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is of course related to customer retention, because satisfied customers are more likely to come back to your business for more products/services. So, the better your customer’s overall experience is, the more likely they’ll remain loyal to your brand and ensure more consistent profitability.
Increased Willingness to Spend
Highly satisfied customers are going to be encouraged by their positive experience with your team, and this subsequently will lead to positive spending habits like maintaining subscriptions, signing up for your email marketing newsletters, checking out your other products/services, and writing positive online reviews.
Employee Satisfaction
It’s safe to say that FCR is a crucial customer satisfaction metric, but a lot of business leaders don’t realize that this is also a good metric to gauge your employee satisfaction as well.
Customer service agents love helping customers, and they enjoy their jobs a lot more when they’re keeping customers happy and resolving their issues as quickly as possible. So, FCR is a great metric to keep in mind when it comes to things like employee retention and overall happiness.
How To Measure FCR
Below is a quick list of metrics that can help you accurately calculate your company’s FCR percentage:
- Total number of customer calls
- Total number of resolutions
- Total number of first call resolutions
- Average resolution times per inquiry
- Inquiries that rarely get resolved during the first call
- Average NPS per inquiry
Although every business is different and receives different kinds of inquiries, this type of data is absolutely critical for every business to take seriously.
How To Improve Your Company’s FCR Scores
If you’re seeing lower FCR scores than you’d like, then there could be several factors contributing to this decrease in call center efficiency. Having a data-driven view of this situation is important, because you’ll want to ensure that you’re fixing the correct problem to ultimately get the FCR scores back up.
Here are some of our tips to improve your company’s FCR scores:
- Thoroughly evaluate your company’s status quo and call strategies
- Pinpoint where your team needs to make improvements
- Specify your goals on how everyone can contribute to improve FCR scores
- Design a blueprint to reach your customer service goals
- Continue measuring your success by tracking FCR performance
There are also many FCR best practices that your company can implement, including:
- Optimizing internal documentation
- Ensuring rapid customer service responses
- Understanding your customers
- Complete call logs
- Invest in CRM integration
- Conduct skill-based call routing
- Use call tags
- Do customer follow-ups
Contact The Data Talk Team To Learn More About How We Can Help You Improve Your Company’s First Call Resolution!
Data Talk is one of the leading telecom companies in Central Ohio, and we’re here to help your company improve your most important metrics like first call resolution.
Contact us online or give us a call at 614-784-7100 to learn more about how we can support you and your FCR strategies!
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