– Call Centers Performance Perception and Reality

This is a neat stat … wanted to bring it here..

Companies hoping to expand the role of call centers and to make them substantial revenue generators—not merely places to field complaints and inquiries—must accurately measure the sales performance of agents. Sometimes, however, performance-management programs can encourage the wrong kinds of behavior. Relying on traditional metrics, such as total revenue per month, as a measure of sales performance, for example, can prompt agents to rush from one caller to the next in pursuit of easy sales. The result looks good if companies measure revenue against agents, but not so good if they consider revenue per caller. By the lights of the latter metric, an agent who takes more time with callers may be making the most of each customer interaction, even if it takes longer to do so. The company could probably boost its revenue by hiring more agents and encouraging them to sell more services during each call.

courtesy: McKinsey Quarterly