Customer Support Metrics 101: First Call Resolution Defined

  

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As far as metrics go, First Call Resolution (FCR) is one of the most important and useful metrics measured for the customer service and support or contact center. But many organizations find it difficult to properly measure and determine FCR impact on the support center and the business as a whole. Smaller organizations may feel this metric won't apply as well to them, but it is always best to know how you are doing in your efforts to keep customers happy and coming back.

A great first step to learning anything new is to define it: what is it, what does it do, what is it for, why use it? As with problems, the definition creates a framework to hang the rest of the practice on.

Here is one definition, from Kristin Robertson's book "Spectacular Support Centers: Best Practices for Small to Mid-Sized Help Desks and Technical Support Centers" :

[FCR] is both an efficiency measure and an effectivenesss measure. It is a leading indicator of customer satisfaction because customers want their support requests resolved immediately. Also important to the support center because high FCR saves money. Beware of putting too much focus on this metric without balancing it with re-open rates.

As you can see, there is a caveat at the end of the definition. We know that you only hire the best, most ethical and hard-working support agents for your customer service center, but just in case, keep in mind that most metrics can be influenced by user behavior. In this case, an agent may "resolve" an issue and close it when it is not really resolved. The ticket must then be re-opened or a new one created to complete the resolution.

A shorter, more mathematical definition comes from the SQM Group:

...FCR performance is the percentage of customers who achieved call resolution in one call.

In other words, the name is pretty self-explanatory.

According to the SQM Group, the current call center industry average for number of calls to resolve a customer's problem is 1.4; one-third of customers must call back to complete the resolution. How satisfied do you suppose that one-third is with the service they received?

As I mentioned in a previous post, not all calls can be resolved the first time. Complex problems may require multiple troubleshooting steps, long processing times, or are simply the contact center version of a case for Dr. House.  With a quality product, this should be rare. Increasing FCR rates will give your contact center more time to deal with these calls when they do come in.

Well, that is enough to wrap your head around for one day. See the next post (Customer Support Metrics 101: Measuring First Call Resolution) to learn about best practices in measuring this metric.

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