5 tips to improve FCR or First Call Resolution
Improving the First Call Resolution (FCR) rate is essential for any company wishing to offer quality customer service.
A high FCR means that customer issues are resolved on the first contact, which increases their satisfaction and reduces operational costs.
In this article, we offer 5 practical tips to optimize your FCR, strengthen customer loyalty, and improve the efficiency of your call center.
Why improve your FCR?
Improving your first call resolution rate offers many advantages as a call center or customer service. According to the SQM Group, each 1% improvement in first call resolution leads to:
- A +1% improvement in CSAT:
FCR is directly linked to customer satisfaction. When customers have their issues resolved on the first contact, they experience greater confidence and an improved overall experience, which strengthens their loyalty to the company.
- A -1% decrease in operational costs:
Improving FCR also enhances operational efficiency. Fewer repeat calls mean a reduction in call volumes, allowing agents to focus on new issues and manage their time more effectively.
- A +1 to +5% improvement in employee satisfaction:
A high first call resolution rate helps improve agent morale and productivity. Agents who are able to resolve issues quickly and efficiently experience greater job satisfaction and less stress. This can also reduce staff turnover, as agents are more likely to stay in a positive and rewarding work environment.
In summary, the tips you will discover in this article address not only the challenges of improving and monitoring FCR, but also other key indicators such as CSAT, ESAT, conversion rate, and sales.
Tip #1: Access your telephone call data
The challenge for many contact centers is accessing telephone conversation data in a usable format to implement concrete actions for building loyalty and improving quality, while also complying with GDPR requirements.
To facilitate access to this data and implement concrete actions, Batvoice AI's speech analytics technology enables you to:
- Automatically transcribe all calls from your contact center
- Structure this data according to a framework tailored to your industry
- Highlight the reasons for calls and the topics expressed by customers
Batvoice AI provides analytical support tools for both the customer's voice and quality management. In addition, our teams provide operational support with ROI monitoring before your project and continuously during your use.
Tip #2: Identify pain points in the customer journey
Counting and categorizing the topics raised by customers will allow you to accurately identify and prioritize a multitude of issues to address, such as:
- The number of times your customers call your contact centers back
- The reasons for customer calls
- The number of promoters and detractors
For a better analysis of topics, a speech analytics platform like Batvoice will allow you to precisely trace the recurring elements of customer speech in volume and proportion. Among these speech elements, you will find, for example, recurring questions asked by your customers or even pain points 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 in volume or percentage. Using filters, the company can also navigate through the calls and replay segments of customer calls or even the entire call.
Tip #3: Identify and be alerted in real time to at-risk calls
Identifying and reacting quickly to at-risk calls is essential for customer satisfaction and loyalty, and thus avoiding customer churn. By resolving critical issues on first contact, customers see that their concerns are taken seriously, which strengthens their trust and loyalty to the company.
To track at-risk customers and identify the risk of repeat calls, Batvoice AI allows you to apply a variety of identification criteria, such as CSAT score or keywords and emotions in the customer's voice (such as anger or detection of irritants). 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 in the event of an at-risk call:
- With the keyword approach: during a customer-agent conversation, when the customer mentions specific terms such as "this is the last time I use your services", the keyword detection rules you have chosen will allow you to display these calls in your call tracking list.
- With AI assistance: AI automatically identifies the reasons for calls and the customer's emotions to associate an action with them, for example: "The request [access to the customer area] is unresolved and the customer's level of anger is high". The teams then receive a daily report of calls presenting a risk of customer churn to act immediately.
Thanks to this visibility, companies are implementing processes for prioritizing customer callbacks 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 customer interaction are crucial to improving the First Call Resolution (FCR) rate.
Well-trained agents have the skills and knowledge necessary to effectively identify and resolve customer issues on first contact.
Clear and coherent customer communication ensures precise and reassuring interaction, thereby reducing misunderstandings and the need for follow-ups. Together, these elements increase customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Offer targeted training actions to advisors to help them manage situations that cause customer callbacks, which streamlines the processes and operations behind these situations.
In addition, employees will feel more competent and confident in their ability to solve customer problems, which reduces stress related to uncertainty and difficult interactions with customers. By feeling better prepared and more effective, agents experience greater job satisfaction, which improves their well-being at work. Consequently, satisfied and less stressed agents are more likely to provide quality service, leading to increased customer satisfaction.
Thanks to its quality management features, Batvoice AI provides its customers with a space to evaluate their call center agents in order 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 implemented, it is essential to measure its effects on the First Call Resolution rate (FCR), on customer irritants, and on the quality of the advisors' speech.
Batvoice AI facilitates this task by offering a "timeline" that allows measuring the evolution of each subject and sub-subject over periods defined by the user (hours, days, weeks or months).
Companies can thus use dashboards to visualize trends and compare performance before and after the implementation of actions. They can also export reports or easily track performance thanks to the automatic sending of results by email at the desired frequency.
