Typical Call Center ‘Quality’ Measures

Typical Call Center ‘Quality’ Measures and Goals



• Average speed of answer: <10 seconds
• Abandoned call rate: <2%
• Busy rate: <1%
• Queue wait time: <60 seconds
• On hold wait time: <10 seconds
• First Call Length: <5 minutes
• First call resolution: >90%, no transfers
• Calls monitored: >10 calls per month per CSR
• …


But, are these Good Enough?
What do you Customers’ REALLY Expect? … How do you know?

Kano Analysis

Kano Analysis, or the Theory of Attractive Quality (Kano et al 1984) is a powerful method to listen to customers and hear what they really expect from products/services.

The approach is based on the assumption that all customers, including ourselves as consumers, classify all features (or attributes) of a product/service into one of five categories:

1) Threshold Attributes

2) Performance Attributes

3) Excitement Attributes

4) More is Worse Attributes

5) Does not Matter Attributes

Performance attributes are those for which more is generally better, and will improve
customer satisfaction. Conversely, an absent or weak performance attribute reduces
customer satisfaction. Of the needs customers identify, most will fall into this category.
The price for which customer is willing to pay for a product is closely tied to
performance attributes.

Threshold (or basic) attributes are the expected attributes or “musts” of a product, and do not provide an opportunity for product differentiation.
Increasing the performance of these attributes provides diminishing returns in terms of customer satisfaction, however the absence or poor performance of these attributes results in
extreme customer dissatisfaction.

More is Worse attributes speaks for itself. Here the more there is of something, say smell, the worse the Customer satisfaction will be.

Similarly, Does not Matter attributes are features that the Customer could not care less about.

Excitement attributes are unspoken and unexpected by customers but can result in high
customer satisfaction, however their absence does not lead to dissatisfaction.

An interesting aspect of Excitement attributes is that it is not uncommon that Customer's will actually grade these initially as "I do not want that feature", only latter to say after using the feature that they "Couldn't live without it!".
This is why these type of attributes are often called 'Breakthrough".