A Few KPIs of the Outbound Call Centre in UK

Posted by Polash Borah

Both the inbound and outbound processes have their roles cut out for them. The inbound campaigns are involved in supporting the existing customers and their retention. While on the other hand, the outbound processes are those that are actively involved in promoting, marketing and selling of the client’s products or services. In the outbound territory, there are mainly the functions of lead generation, telemarketing, debt collection on behalf of the client etc. Recently, a hybrid of both the campaigns which is known as the ‘blended’ process is also picking up the pace in the BPO sector.

The following is a list of a few key performance indices related to the assessment of outbound call centre’s growth.

Conversion rate

It is the percentage of calls that successfully convert a visitor into a lead or a lead into a customer out of the total calls placed at any given period of time. It is directly proportional to the total revenue generated. Higher conversion rate means more leads/sales, which results in more revenue collected. It is one of the most important metrics to choose while evaluating your company’s performance in a year.

A low conversion rate may be indicative of a lapse in web traffic, poor search engine optimization, non-engaging, and non-interactive landing page or an unattractive exchange offer for the visitors.

List penetration rate

It is defined as the number of prospects that were successfully closed by the sales team divided by the total number of prospects present in the list or the campaign. Each name on the list has a cost of acquisition. Therefore, it is important to know the accuracy of the list i.e., to understand how specific or targeted the list is. For instance, if someone is selling baby shoes in England then the list of employed bachelors living in London would be a very inaccurate list for the campaign.

Calls per agent

In the outbound call centres, calls per agent is a metric to examine the time an agent has worked on. Unmotivated and procrastinating agents have less score in this metric. Motivating the agents and incentivising their work may improve this score. Also, if agents are manually dialling instead of an automatic dialler, it negatively affects the score.

First call close

It is similar to the first call resolution (FCR) metric in the inbound call campaigns. First call close metric gives us the record of the number of successful sales in an agent first contact with a customer. BPOs that are mainly outbound call centres realise that a dynamic user engaging script has a favourable impact on this index.

Average hold time

It is one of the new indices for the outbound call centres. Its inception is related to the advent of automatic diallers in call centres. Here it determines the average time a prospect is on hold before an agent answers the call. An increase in this metric may result in frequent call abandonment.

Occupancy rate

It is defined as the time a call centre rep spends on call against the time he is not on call. It gives a direct insight into the productivity of an executive.

Abandoned call ratio-

Abandoned call ratio is the ratio of abandoned calls to the total calls received. It happens when a prospect disconnects the phone while waiting on hold for an agent. Higher call abandonments will decrease potential sale opportunities. Typically, anything under 2% is acceptable but higher than 5% should be of concern to the manager.

The above mentioned key performance indices are a few of the important metrics that each and every outbound call centres should evaluate and examine to understand their lapses, blind spots and also to know their strengths. These are used to set goals and strategize possible scenarios before starting a particular campaign. Every individual campaign should have their strategies planned out according to the requirements and asks. Though there are a few standardised indexes frequently used by the call centre industry which are quite important but individually we can create our own indices specific to the need of a particular niche. Key performance indices are a broader term to generalise the metrics used within an industry. Virtually anything can be measured with the appropriate gauge suitable for the particular scenario.

Ultimately, it is the performance of a particular company that we are trying to get a sense of, through measuring these KPIs. For instance, it may either be a BPO oriented or an agriculture-oriented corporate entity but, each one will have a different set of KPIs cratered to the specific needs of that particular sector.

Tags: Outbound call centre Outbound calling BPO Inbound call centre Lead generation