4 Critical Call Center Metrics for Dealerships

admin | Call Center, Contact Center, Customer Service | automotive contact center, call center, contact center, customer service, dealership customer service

We have previously discussed the KPIs your dealership should track to measure success, but what about the call center? After all, they have their own metrics that indicate areas of opportunity as well as wins for your business. Of course, they should be mindful of to ensure customer retention, good sales numbers, and to improve upon processes. But how can they be tracked and evaluated? To get started on tracking call center metrics for dealerships, here are four key metrics to keep tabs on in your department.

Call Abandonment Rate

Dropped calls are something no contact center agent wants to have, but it does happen. It’s important to keep that percentage of abandoned or dropped calls to a minimum. The abandonment rate (or ARP) is the percentage of phone calls, generally inbound, made to a call center and abandoned by the customer before speaking to an agent. The general standard for a call center is to have a 2% or less abandoned call rate. If your call center is inching towards 5% or higher, that can be an issue and could lead to poor customer satisfaction and in turn, customer churn.

To figure out your abandon rate percentage, use this equation, which excludes any calls abandoned within 5 seconds, as those may be wrong numbers:

ARP = (# of calls offered – # of calls abandoned in 5 seconds – # of calls resolved) / (# of calls offered – # of calls abandoned in 5 seconds) x 100

Call abandonment rate can tie directly to wait times, being put on hold, and not being offered a callback. Here are some effective ways automotive dealership call centers can minimize abandoned calls:

• Maintain a full staff, especially at busy call hours in the day.
• Improve on-call messages.
• Use a call back service that gives customers an option to wait, or receive a call back when their time in the queue comes up.
• Reduce wait times, and answer within a few rings.
• Incorporate after-hours answering services into your operation to make sure customers can choose to call back later and still reach someone.

Average Call Wait Time

There is a Golden Rule in the customer service industry that 80% of all calls should be answered within 20 seconds. We call this the 80/20 rule. While 20 seconds doesn’t seem like a lot of time, it can make a big difference to your customers!

Today’s consumers expect things to happen as fast as possible. With self-checkout lanes and same-day delivery via Amazon Prime, people don’t have to wait to get what they want anymore! HubSpot Research conducted a consumer survey that showed consumer patience wears out in under 10 minutes.

With a full staff receiving inbound calls and making outbound calls, this should be completely achievable. Introducing chat and email options for contacting your call center can also help alleviate some of that pressure, and it may be more suitable for managing high volumes.

Average Handle Time

Average handle time is another very important metric to track. If measured appropriately, it can help determine proper staffing needs so that a call center can run as efficiently as possible—without over or under hiring.

Average handle time (AHT) is the average duration of one phone transaction, starting from the customer’s initiation, including any hold time, talk time and post-call tasks, to the end of the call. To calculate you will add those numbers together, and divide by the total number of calls:

AHT = total talk time + total hold time + total post-call tasks / number of total calls

Customer Satisfaction

How does that old saying go… “The proof is in the pudding”? We don’t really know the origins of that phrase, but we know it means the effort put in should be reflected the outcome. By putting in a good effort towards customers, it should mean high customer satisfaction. This could be shown in reviews (both good or bad), or in a verbal confirmation that the call center did a good job.

If you notice reviews are going down, or more bad reviews are being left on your site, take action quickly. Customer satisfaction is one of the most telling metrics a call center can utilize for how they are doing overall. It can be an overarching issue with wait times, resolutions, agents, callbacks, etc… If your customers are telling you something is broken, it probably is. This is an opportunity to improve upon all of the above-mentioned metrics, which tie directly to a customer’s likelihood of coming back.

You should be diligently tracking and reviewing all of these call center metrics for dealerships quarterly. This data can help improve processes, find ways to make customers happier and more satisfied, and bring cost savings when you can staff and plan appropriately.

Customer Traac has been partnering with dealerships for over 30 years, improving customer satisfaction and growing profitability. To learn more about how Customer Traac can help your dealership, contact us today.