![Tips to Improve Your First Call Resolution [FCR] Score](https://www.billgosling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/FCR-Score.webp)
Introduction
When a customer calls a contact center, they expect the agents to resolve their query immediately. Aware of their worth, a valuable customer believes that their issue is the most critical and should be addressed first. When that doesn’t happen in real time, it leaves them disappointed. This, in turn, affects the agent’s performance score as well as the contact center’s First Contact Resolution (FCR) score.
FCR score refers to the number of times customer issues were resolved during their first call or interaction with the contact center. This interaction is not limited to phone calls and can include chat, email, SMS, and social media. While FCR is often seen as influencing customer satisfaction, it also impacts customer loyalty, agent performance, and the organization’s overall profitability.
Table of Contents
- What Makes First Call Resolution (FCR) So Critical?
- Tips to Attain a Higher FCR Score
- Identify and Fix the Issues
- Comprehend Your Customers’ Needs
- Improve Your Support Structure
- Total Contact Ownership
- Restructure Your Internal Processes
- Focus on Attaining Maximum Customer Satisfaction
Why First Call Resolution (FCR) Is Critical
FCR is one of the most important metrics for a contact center. It helps drive performance and improve profitability. By defining a
customer’s satisfaction
level based on their experience, FCR indicates how often customers are happy with your service—ultimately reducing the churn rate.
FCR also helps lower operational costs. A reduced churn rate means more queries are being resolved on first contact, compared to centers with high unresolved query volumes.
Proven Tips to Increase Your FCR Score
Improving your FCR score is essential to contact center performance. Here are some effective tips:
Identify and Fix the Issues
If your FCR score is low, first identify what’s causing delays in resolution. Analyzing data, call logs, agent feedback, and recordings can help uncover trends, inefficiencies, knowledge gaps, and system issues.
Once the root causes are clear, take corrective action and adopt a proactive approach to prevent similar issues from recurring.
Understand Customers’ Needs
Knowing your customers’ preferences is key. Analyze calls and interactions to group customers by demographics, education, or interests.
This segmentation helps agents understand needs more deeply and route calls more effectively—leading to better resolutions and improved FCR.
Enhance Your Support Structure
A well-planned support structure boosts FCR. Equip your team with the right tools, clear escalation processes, and smart routing algorithms.
Assign tasks to specific support levels—e.g., frontline agents for basic queries, engineers for technical issues. Cross-train agents to handle different query types and improve efficiency during call surges.
Adopt Total Contact Ownership
This approach holds agents accountable for calls from start to finish, minimizing call transfers and customer frustration.
It encourages agents to resolve issues fully and take pride in their work. It also boosts FCR and enhances customer satisfaction.
Read more here.
Restructure Your Internal Processes
If outdated processes are hurting FCR, identify and replace them. For example, empower agents to resolve simple queries like billing or discounts without escalations.
Optimizing routing and ensuring efficient use of agent time are key to achieving better FCR outcomes.
Prioritize Maximum Customer Satisfaction
Organizations are now focused not only on product quality but also on improving FCR,
Net Promoter Score (NPS),
and overall performance.
Investing time and resources in improving FCR will enhance customer satisfaction and lead to long-term success.
Explore how.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What does First Call Resolution (FCR) mean and why is it significant?
First Call Resolution (FCR) is a method used to measure a contact center’s ability to resolve customer issues during the initial interaction. It is one of the crucial metrics to understand customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and cost reduction.
90% of customers consider prompt resolution of their issues as a leading priority when contacting a call center.
2. How to calculate the FCR score?
FCR is generally calculated as:
FCR Rate (%) = (Total Resolved Calls on First Contact / Total Incoming Calls) × 100
3. What is considered a good FCR rate in the industry?
The optimum First Call Resolution rate in the industry is typically between 70% to 79%, depending on the efficiency of modern call centers.
4. At what interval should the FCR score be monitored?
FCR should preferably be monitored on a daily or weekly basis. To identify trends and areas for improvement, a monthly or quarterly in-depth review is highly recommended.
2024’s Top Call Center Statistics: Trends and Insights
