Have you ever taken the time to see what it’s really like to interact with your call center? Your customer experience (CX) can make or break your retention rates, brand image, revenue growth, overall reputation, and more.
But if you’re not tracking (and acting on) the right call center metrics, it’s difficult to understand what’s working, what isn’t, and how your customers truly feel. 77% say they care about CX just as much as product and price. If you’re not careful, you can easily lose them.
Here, we’ll show you how to accurately measure customer experience using 10 crucial call center metrics for CX—and how you can maximize their impact.
Your call center is the frontline of your business—where consumer sentiment is shaped in real time. Every conversation influences how people perceive your brand, and even a single bad interaction can drive people away. Salesforce reports that 80% of customers feel a company’s experience is just as important as the products and services on offer.
Strong CX builds trust, boosts brand loyalty, and encourages positive word of mouth, while weak experiences fuel frustration, churn, and lost revenue. Without clear insights into these interactions, you risk losing control of your brand perception.
The right data helps you take action, improve satisfaction, and strengthen relationships. But what should you be tracking, and what call center metrics have the biggest impact?
CSAT measures how satisfied customers are after an interaction—typically through post-interaction surveys—on a scale of 1-5 (or sometimes 1-10). You then take those scores and find the percentage that are positive by dividing the number of satisfied customers by the total responses, and multiplying by 100.
NPS gauges customer loyalty by asking how likely they are to recommend your business to others. Customers can respond on a scale of 1 to 10, categorized into “promoters”, “passives”, or “detractors”. You then calculate your NPS by subtracting the percentage of detractors (0-6 ratings) from promoters (9-10 ratings)—higher scores tend to indicate better brand advocacy.
For specific tactics on how to boost your Net Promoter Score, check out our eBook: Improving Customer Experience and NPS Through Quality Assessment.
FCR is a measurement of customer issues that get resolved on the first interaction without needing a follow-up. High FCR reduces frustration and means your call center is running efficiently. To calculate it, divide the number of issues resolved on the first call by the total number of cases, and multiply it by 100 to get a percentage.
Your CES measures how easy (or difficult) it is for customers to get their issues resolved. A lower effort score tends to indicate better overall CX. It’s based on prompting customers for their feedback, such as “How easy was it to resolve your issue today?” with an array of options, with lower scores meaning more effort was needed.
Customer sentiment tracks the emotional tone of interactions, giving deeper insights into how people feel about your service. By using AI-powered sentiment analysis tools, you can automatically detect emotions and tone in speech and text.
These tools (which are often part of your QA software) can assess voice tone, word choice, and phrasing, before categorizing them into “positive”, “neutral”, or “negative” sentiment.
Average handle time is a measurement of the total time an agent spends on an interaction, including talk time, hold time, and after-call work. Maintaining a balanced AHT shows your agents are working efficiently without sacrificing service quality. To measure it, divide the total time spent handling calls by the number of calls handled within a specific time period.
This inbound call center metric is the percentage of calls disconnected before they reach an agent. High abandonment rates often mean long wait times or ineffective call routing systems, leading to customer frustration. You can measure it by dividing the number of abandoned calls by the total incoming calls, and multiplying by 100 to get a percentage.
QA scores are generated as part of your evaluation process, highlighting the effectiveness of agent-customer interactions based on predefined criteria like compliance, professionalism, and problem resolution. This call center performance tracking method helps ensure consistency and highlight coaching opportunities.
Omnichannel call center metrics assess how well customers transition between communication channels like phone, chat, email, and social media. People want seamless experiences regardless of the channel they’re reaching out from. But if it’s a poor or inconsistent experience, it can frustrate them and negatively impact the overall experience.
Customer feedback is an honest assessment of service quality, agent performance, and the overall experience directly from the source. Collecting and using this feedback is essential to refining your processes and improving CSAT in call centers. And, crucially, 63% of customers agree that companies need to do a better job listening to their feedback.
Tracking the right call center metrics is essential to understanding the customer experience and making informed decisions that drive improvement. Each metric can give you valuable insights into different aspects of service quality, efficiency, and customer sentiment.
However, simply collecting data isn’t enough—you need to act on it to make a difference. Identifying trends, addressing weak points, and continuously optimizing processes will help you boost CSAT scores, reduce friction, and improve agent performance.
And while quantitative CX metrics give you the numbers, your QA fills in the gaps with deeper context. QA evaluations, root cause analysis, and qualitative feedback help explain why issues are happening, allowing you to take more targeted action.
This goes even further when you use AI to automate your QA processes. It can speed up manual workflows through automation, evaluate all of your conversations, and power custom agent scorecards to give you a bird’s-eye view of your call center performance
To get the full picture on how AI can help you scale your QA process to better track call center customer experience, download our eBook: 8 Ways to Use AI for QA.
