Had an interesting conversation with Vodafone’s external relations manager Paul Brislen the other day about the metrics the company uses in its contact centre. Apparently they’ve just changed from Average Handling Time to First Call Resolution, which in typical Vodafone fashion has been rebranded as Right First Time.
I immediately spotted a topic for a Mouthpiece blog post and emailed Paul straight away with my questions (in italics below). He spoke to Sarah Howells, Vodafone’s new GM of Service, and she has provided the following replies.
Why has Vodafone decided to change the metric?
Average Handling Time (AHT) is still a metric that we review and track. It forms an essential part of our budget model. However, when I joined Vodafone I realised that we were driving AHT and therefore felt we were driving the wrong behaviours. I could see from our quality results that our First Call Resolution (FCR) results were not where they needed to be and so decided to change every customer representative’s KPIs to reflect our focus on quality.
Instead of focusing on AHT we focus on the components that make up AHT - talk time, hold/consult time and after call work. For example, by identifying why our CSRs need to put customers on hold to seek help we have been able to identify training needs, in turn improve the customer experience and also improve FCR.
AHT has increased marginally as a result of this change, however FCR has increased and so the net effect is that our customers call us less and have a better customer experience. We utilise our Outbound Customer Surveys to measure our success in this area.
Is this change in metric part of Vodafone's overall strategy to push customers onto the web? If so, could you please explain how and why?
Not directly, however without having improved our First Call Resolution we would not have been able to implement Pre Pay Operator Assistance so effectively.
How do you measure Right First Time (RFT)?
We measure Right First Time in a couple of ways:
Firstly, in our outbound customer survey tool we ask customers a number of questions, one of which is - did we manage to resolve your query for you? We can link this back to an individual agent, which is a really powerful tool to have in order to quantify training needs.
Secondly, when we code each call we have to enter the customer’s mobile number into the call qualification tool. That allows us to track how many times a customer calls back for the same reason within seven days and who the originating agent was.
We always use the Customer Survey as our baseline RFT result because that's direct customer feedback. The second measure is only as accurate as the agent qualifying the call, but it’s a good indication of agent performance all the same.