When a customer calls a contact center, they expect the agents to resolve their query at the same time. Aware of their
worth, a valuable customer believes that his/her issues are the most critical and, hence, should be addressed first.
When the same does not occur in the real-time scenario, 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 the issues reported by the customers were resolved at the very first call or
interaction they had with the executives at the contact center. This interaction is not just limited to a phone call and
can take multiple forms, such as chat, email, text and social media. While FCR is often considered to impact a
customer’s satisfaction score, the score can also affect a customer’s loyalty towards the brand, their performance and
efficiency, and the organization’s overall profitability.
Table of Contents
- What Makes First Call Resolution (FCR) So Critical?
- Tips To Attain 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
What Makes First Call Resolution (FCR) So Critical?
FCR is one of the most important metrics to be measured by the contact center that may help drive performance and
improve profitability. Defining a customer’s satisfaction level based on their experience with your brand, FCR helps
determine the number of times the customers were happy with your services, which, in turn, helps in reducing the churn
rate of the contact center.
FCR is also helpful in decreasing the operational cost of the contact centers. This is because having a reduced customer
churn rate signifies that you have been able to resolve a higher number of customer queries in comparison to the contact
centers that have a large chunk of customer queries pending in their database.
Tips To Attain Higher FCR Score
Attaining an improved FCR score is the goal of many contact centers, as this element highly impacts the center’s
performance score. Some of the common ways in which you can attain a higher FCR for your contact center are as mentioned
below:
Identify And Fix The Issues
In case of a poor FCR score, identifying the reasons behind any delay in resolving customer queries at the first contact
is important. This will not only help in identifying the common causes behind the delay but also in identifying the
common trends and inefficiencies, the specific products leading to incompetence, agents’ knowledge and training required
to fix the issue, etc.
All this information can be collected by analyzing the data and call logs, talking to the agents and listening to call
recordings. Once these issues are identified, it is best to begin fixing the issues and also adopt a preventive approach
that can help deter the issues before they actually occur.
Comprehend Your Customers’ Needs
For a company, it is always better to know their customers’ needs and preferences. This can be done by analyzing the
calls and the interactions that take place between the customers and the agents. Doing so would enable an easy
segmentation of the customers into different groups that will be done on the basis of factors like demographics,
education or interest.
Grouping the calls on the basis of these factors can help in understanding your customers better. This makes it easier
to comprehend their needs and collect the relevant information as required. The information collected can later assist
the agents to handle calls better as well as route them to the teams that can handle them better. Adopting this approach
can then be used to improve the FCR score.
Improve Your Support Structure
Having an improved and well-planned support structure can be a great way to improve the FCR score for an organization. A
set of the right tools and software combined with a clear understanding of the customers, delegation of each issue to a
different support level and alteration of the routing algorithm can help in improving the FCR score.
For better productivity and improved FCR score, it is important to delegate each task to a different level of support.
For instance, a frontline agent can be requested to solve basic problems; support engineers can be employed to handle
multiple technical issues, etc. Cross-training the agents to handle more than one type of call can also act as a great
trick. Doing so would enable the best utilization of the available resources specifically in case of fluctuating call
volume.
Total Contact Ownership
Adopting this approach can act as a great tool to avoid the risk of irritating or frustrating your customers. This is
the process in which an agent is held responsible for a particular call that they manage from the start to the end.
Adopting this approach is beneficial as it helps minimize the risk of calls being transferred from one agent to another.
The agents would now be more interested in closing the calls that they are handling. Following this approach will not
only improve the FCR score but will also inspire the agents to act more professionally, aim towards attaining customer
satisfaction and enhance brand awareness.
Restructure Your Internal Processes
Restructuring internal processes is a must if the present structure is negatively affecting the FCR score. This can
begin with the process of identifying the inefficient processes and procedures that can be replaced or eliminated for
other efficient processes. For instance, your agents, in the current scenario, might be required to transfer all the
concerns to the department head. But, eliminating this mandate by empowering them to handle basic queries like billing
and promotional discounts can be a great help.
Adjusting the routing of the calls and making sure that every individual’s time is utilized to its best are the best
ways to attain an unsurpassed FCR score.
Focus on Attaining Maximum Customer Satisfaction
From working solely towards improving their product line, many organizations have also started to work towards improving
their FCR score, Net Promoter Score (NPS) and other metrics that define their performance. This is done after analyzing
that focusing solely on a single factor will never reap as impressive results as working towards attaining overall
performance improvement. Therefore, dedicate the required time, energy and resources to improve your FCR score
consistently, and you will surely be able to attain maximum customer satisfaction.
