This eBook explores and defines first contact resolution. Should you track it in your contact center?
You have likely heard about first contact resolution (FCR) at an industry event or webinar, read about it in a book or article, or perhaps it’s your boss’s favorite metric, and you’ve been tasked with tracking it in your contact center. Regardless of how you learned of FCR, it’s important to acknowledge the variety of opinions about this metric and its usefulness — some finding it extremely useful and others the opposite.
One thing that most contact centers don’t have is a shortage of metrics. And, they are often quick to add more metrics to their performance dashboards, chasing the latest fad, without fully understanding it. And without understanding a metric and its purpose, how can you work to improve it in a way that benefits the contact center and the company as a whole?
In this ebook, you will better understand what FCR is and the true purpose of tracking it. But, let's take a look at a couple of different customer service scenarios before we dive into a definition.
Bob contacts the customer service team at ACME Pet Supply and connects with James, who helps Bob order a bag of super-nutritious food for his dog Sparky. James is friendly and efficient and is able to handle the call in about five minutes and move on to the next. Shortly after hanging up with James, Bob realizes that he’s also out of Sparky’s favorite chicken jerky treats and poop bags and so he calls customer service again to place a second order.
Judy contacts ACME Pet Supply and is connected with Richard, who helps her place an order for a bag of food for her dog Winky. Richard is equally friendly, but before completing the order, he quickly scans Judy’s past orders and sees that she typically also orders a pack of ultra squeaky rubber balls and those organic peanut butter snacks that Winky goes crazy for. Richard takes a few extra moments to ask Judy if she needs a refill on any of these items. She’s grateful for the reminder and adds both to her order. In this case, the call took about six and a half minutes, but all of Judy’s pet supply needs were taken care of on the first and only call.
Judy's pet care needs were completely addressed in one call to ACME Pet Supply, while Bob had to place multiple calls to keep Sparky happy.
Definition: First Contact Resolution is the percentage of customer interactions where the customer’s issue is resolved on their first contact with customer service.
Beyond the fact that resolving customer issues more efficiently is a better experience, why should we care about FCR? According to Brad Cleveland, in his book Contact Center Management on Fast Forward, “Organizations incur many additional expenses (some hidden and difficult to track) when customer issues are not fully resolved on the first contact.”
These additional expenses materialize in a variety of ways, including:
The list of consequences to a poor experience can go on and on. As we go back to the two scenarios from earlier, the second scenario, where Richard was able to take care of all of Judy’s pet care needs on the first call is a perfect example of FCR. It’s clear that resolving the customer’s issue on the first interaction should be the goal of any contact center, both to improve customer experience and to increase revenue.
Traditionally the C in FCR stood for “call,” but in a world where call centers now engage with customers in different channels including email, chat, SMS, social media, and more, to limit it to one channel would be shortsighted.
Imagine a customer calling your company one time and having a poor experience. Because they only called once, you count it as first call resolved. However, after further digging, you discovered that they also emailed and tweeted about their issue but never received responses to those messages. That’s three interactions about the same issue on three different channels, which certainly should not qualify as first contact resolved.
In a contact center interacting with customers over multiple different channels, the C shouldn’t stand for “call.” But what should it stand for? It turns out, there are a lot of good words that start with C when it comes to contact centers. In addition to call, chat, and case (or ticket) are out of the running because they also typically apply to a single channel.
Contact. The customer may contact you in a variety of ways, and you need to be prepared to resolve their issue(s) in the channel they prefer. Furthermore, customers appreciate companies that are equally responsive and helpful regardless of the channel.
Conversation. Because a modern customer interaction could very well span multiple channels, empowering contact center agents to switch channels if it means a better outcome for the customer is important. For example, a customer sends an urgent email and the agent picks up the phone and immediately calls because it will result in a better, more timely resolution.
The important point this illustrates is that your FCR initiative needs to account for the complexity of the modern contact center and make life better for the humans it’s serving. As you focus on your purpose for tracking FCR, words like customer, contact, and conversation ensure that you look to improve the customer’s entire support journey rather than narrowly focusing on improving a number
Speaking of the entire support journey, don’t forget about customer self-service. According to Harvard Business Review,
"81% of all customers attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative."
Self-service is an important customer service channel — and this includes interactions with an automated phone IVR, conversations with chatbots on the company website, and knowledge base and FAQ searches on company websites.
While an FCR metric may very well only measure interactions resolved on the first contact with customer support, it’s important to acknowledge the role self-help plays in the customer’s journey. Self-service is a customer support channel.
This means that any attempt on the customer’s part to self-solve an issue that ultimately results in a customer contacting customer service, counts as the customer’s second attempt at resolving their issue. This reinforces the importance of continuously improving self-help as a core strategy to reduce friction for customers and improve FCR.
Finally, as you consider if FCR is right for your contact center, if you’re committing to measure it, you’d better commit to improving it. This means that as a leader, you need to be prepared to do some deep contact center introspection. This will undoubtedly lead you to important questions such as these:
Did the agent possess the training and expertise to provide the customer with a complete solution?
Was the agent empowered with the appropriate tools and access to provide a complete solution to the customer
Could our self-service options have helped the customer solve their issue without contacting us?
Was the customer service channel used the best channel to resolve the customer’s issue, or should we have directed them to a different option?
What could we have done to prevent the contact altogether?
If you are ready to ask these questions and find the answers, you are ready to track FCR, take action, and significantly improve your customer experience. Learn more about how 8x8 Contact Center can help.