First Contact/First Call Resolution (FCR) has risen to the forefront of contact center performance metrics, causing centers to rethink (and revamp) how performance and success is evaluated.   In his blog “First Call Resolution & Workforce Management: Why these topics will be critical at ACCE 2008”, Brad Cleveland, President of ICMI, highlighted some key lessons learned through implementation and administration of FCR and related metrics.  There is no debating the merit of FCR as a powerful metric, but you must truly understand what the metric means, how to measure it, and the impact to your specific organization.

To help the industry better understand FCR and how effectively (and consistently) contact centers are currently measuring FCR success, ICMI conducted a FCR survey in January 2008.  Almost 300 contact center professionals representing multiple countries and a range of industries participated, and the results were most insightful; over 50% of contact centers are not measuring for FCR -- and of those that are -- most are not doing so effectively.  There has been a rush within the industry “to jump on the FCR bandwagon,” but it appears that many organizations have done so blindfolded.
Some of the highlighted survey results include:

• Suspiciously high FCR rates for telephone interactions.
• Low FCR measurement rates for e-mail transactions (most centers are not measuring).
• Low FCR measurement rates for chat sessions (most centers are not measuring).
• Significant agent self-assessment (as a metric) as to whether FCR was achieved.
• Low rate of agent reward for achievement of FCR.

To assist you and your organization with either the implementation of FCR within your center, or for the evaluation and refinement of any FCR metric(s) currently in place, I will be presenting the highlights of the ICMI FCR survey during a ACCE 2008 session entitled “First Contact Resolution:  Great Principal, Hard to Apply”.  In this session you will have an opportunity to review the findings from the survey as they correlate to telephone interactions, e-mail and chat.

Additionally, you will have the opportunity to learn from your peers through questions and teaming conversations where we will review how others measure FCR, how agent control of FCR is validated, and how the effect of FCR is measured on business operations.  In addition to reviewing the key findings from the survey, we will also discuss the reasons why high FCR rates are not always a sign of success.

In defense of our industry, FCR is a relatively new metric whose potential power to drive center wide success is just now starting to be understood.  Please consider joining myself and your other contact center professionals in discussion that will enable us to better understand and harness the power of this principal and correlating metrics.  I look forward to seeing you shortly at ACCE 2008.