FIRST CONTACT RESOLUTION
Jonathan Gladwish
Call/Contact Centre Consultant with over 35 years experience in setting up, managing and operating both outsourced and inhouse centres.
First Contact Resolution - the most important customer metric
First Contact Resolution (FCR) is becoming one of the most important metrics that needs to be measured by businesses to ensure that they are satisfying the needs of their customers . FCR measures the percentage of customer issues that are resolved the first time that a customer contacts a company.
It is easily measured by calculating the following:
Number of FCR contacts / Total Number of Contacts
So 7500 FCR contacts/10000 Contacts would give an FCR of 75%
However, the difficulty is defining what a successful FCR is, when thousands of contacts are made. So how do we effectively track whether a customer has received a resolution they are satisfied with.
Predominantly, Contact centres are the place where most mass customer interaction takes place. So it is here where we can use a time frame within the first customer contact to determine if that contact was successfully resolved at the first interaction. For example some centres will use a 48 hour time frame to help determine a negative or positive FCR. If a customer calls back within a 48-hour period with the same issue then this is considered an unsuccessful FCR.
In a time when the customer experience is key to success, FCR becomes the key metric to measure and understand. However, resolving a customer’s issue first time is often not within the power of the initial recipient of the customer’s problem and third party intervention is required, i.e. the call out of an engineer to the customer’s premises, or contact with an airline’s ground crew to determine what has happened with lost baggage.
Where this third party intervention is required then it is imperative for the initial recipient to take ownership of the problem to ensure its ultimate resolution. If a customer can feel this ownership of their problem then their perception will be that their issue has been resolved at first point of contact.
A very high FCR can save your company considerable money with the result of less repeat contacts from the customer and greatly improved customer satisfaction.