5 tips to improve FCR or first call resolution
Improving First Call Resolution (FCR) is essential for any company wishing to offer quality customer service.
A high FCR means that customer problems are solved on the first contact, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing operational costs.
In this article, we offer 5 practical tips to optimize your FCR, strengthen customer loyalty and improve call center efficiency.
Why improve your FCR?
As a call center or customer service department, improving your first call resolution rate has many benefits. According to the SQM Group, every 1% improvement in first contact resolution results in :
- An improvement in CSAT of +1% :
FCR is directly linked to customer satisfaction. When customers see their problems solved on the first contact, they feel greater confidence and a better overall experience, which strengthens their loyalty to the company.
- Operating costs down -1% :
Improving FCR also improves operational efficiency. Fewer repeat calls mean lower call volumes, enabling agents to focus on new issues and manage their time more effectively.
- An improvement in employee satisfaction of +1 to +5%:
A high first-call resolution rate helps improve agent morale and productivity. Agents who are able to resolve problems quickly and efficiently experience greater job satisfaction and less stress. This can also reduce staff turnover, as agents are more inclined to stay in a positive and rewarding work environment.
In short, the tips you'll discover in this article will not only help you improve and monitor your RCF, but also other key indicators such as CSAT, ESAT, conversion rate and sales.
Tip 1: Access your call data
The problem for many CRCs is accessing telephone conversation data in a usable way to implement concrete loyalty and quality improvement actions while complying with RGPD requirements.
To facilitate access to this data and implement concrete actions, Batvoice AI's speech analytics technology allows you to:
- Automatically transcribe all your contact center calls
- Structure this data according to a tree structure adapted to your business sector
- Highlight the reasons for calls and the issues expressed by customers
Batvoice AI provides analysis tools for both voice of the customer and quality management. What's more, our teams are on hand to support you operationally, monitoring your ROI upstream of your project and on an ongoing basis.
Tip 2: Identify irritants in the customer journey
Counting and categorizing the issues raised by customers will enable you to accurately identify and prioritize a multitude of topics to work on, such as :
- The number of times your customers call back your contact centers
- Reasons for customer calls
- The number of promoters and detractors
For a better analysis of these topics, a speech analytics platform like Batvoice will enable you to precisely trace the recurring elements of customer discourse in volume and proportion. These include recurring questions asked by your customers, or irritants in the customer journey.
In the example below, the company has access to all the topics raised by customers, and can measure these topics and sub-topics by volume or percentage. Using filters, the company can also navigate through calls and replay segments of customer calls, or the entire call.
Tip 3: Identify and be alerted to high-risk calls in real time
Identifying and reacting quickly to high-risk calls is essential for customer satisfaction and loyalty, and for preventing customer attrition. Resolving critical issues at the first point of contact shows customers that their concerns are being taken seriously, building trust and loyalty with the company.
To track at-risk customers and identify the risk of re-calls, Batvoice AI lets youapply various identification criteria such as CSAT score or keywords and emotions in the customer's voice (such as anger or irritant detection). Based on these identification rules, the platform gives you real-time access to a list of at-risk calls.
Here are two examples of alerts for high-risk calls:
- With the keyword approach: during a customer-agent conversation, when the customer mentions specific terms such as "this is the last time I'll be using your services", the keyword detection rules you've chosen will allow you to display these calls in your call tracking list.
- With AI assistance: AI automatically identifies call reasons and customer emotions to associate an action, for example: "The request [access to the customer area] is unresolved and the customer's level of anger is high". Teams then receive a daily report of calls presenting a risk of customer departure, so they can take immediate action.
Thanks to this visibility, companies set up priority customer recall processes based on the number of irritants and their intensity. For example, they call back customers who have expressed strong anger, in order to turn detractors into promoters and prevent them from leaving for the competition.
Tip 4: Target priority training actions
Agent training and the quality of the customer's message are crucial to improving the First Call Resolution (FCR) rate.
Well-trained agents have the skills and knowledge to identify and resolve customer problems effectively from the very first contact.
A clear, consistent customer message enables precise, reassuring communication, reducing misunderstandings and the need for follow-up. Together, these elements increase customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Offer targeted training to advisors to help them manage the situations that give rise to customer call-backs, thereby streamlining the processes and operations behind these situations.
In addition, employees will feel more competent and confident in their ability to solve customer problems, reducing the stress associated with uncertainty and difficult customer interactions. By feeling better prepared and more effective, agents experience greater job satisfaction, which improves their well-being at work. As a result, satisfied and less stressed agents are better able to deliver quality service, leading to increased customer satisfaction.
Thanks to its quality management functionalities, Batvoice AI provides its customers with a space for evaluating their call center agents to better identify their training needs.
Tip 5: Track the impact of your actions
One of the major difficulties for companies is tracking the impact of their actions. When an initiative is put in place, it is essential to measure its effects on the first call resolution rate (FCR), on customer irritants, and on the quality of advisors' discourse.
Batvoice AI facilitates this task by offering a "timeline" that measures the evolution of each topic and sub-topic over user-defined periods (hours, days, weeks or months).
Companies can use dashboards to visualize trends and compare performance before and after implementing actions. They can also export reports or track performance with ease, thanks to automatic emailing of results at the desired frequency.
