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Ask Dr. Jon 

Dr. Jon Anton (also known as "Dr. Jon") is the Director of Benchmark Research at Purdue University Center for Customer-Driven Quality. Have a Question? E-mail him at [e-mail].

Q: I am looking for what percentage of the time our reps should be in the available status (ready and awaiting a call, but not on one), and what percentage of the time, actively speaking, on an ACD-directed call. Also, what should a realistic goal be?

Eileen Dyson 

A: The two metrics that you are seeking are Percent Available (the percent of time agents are ready and awaiting a call) and the Percent Occupancy (the percent of time agents are actually working on a call (either in a talk, hold, or after call work state). Percent Available plus Percent Occupancy = 100 percent. Agents are either occupied with call-related work or they are waiting for the next call.

A realistic target for Percent Occupancy is directly related to two factors, team size and your service level goals. In order to meet a set service goal, you must build a certain amount of Available time into your scheduling process. The larger your team size, the smaller the Percent Available needs to be to reach a given service level goal.

In most call centers, a reasonable goal for Percent Occupancy will fall between 85 and 95 percent. If your agents are available more than 15 percent of the time, boredom will quickly set in and you will see handle times rise and customer satisfaction fall. If your agents are available less than 5 percent of the time, agents will be reaching burnout, as they will have extended periods with no chance to rest. Again, handle times tend to rise and customer satisfaction tends to fall, The average occupancy across the thousands of participants in the Purdue benchmarking data base is 76.78 percent. There is clearly room for improvement.

What is your average actual e-mail response time?

Description of Answer

                   Respondents

2 to 6 hours
Less than 2 hours    23.20%
22 to 26 hours       12.58%
6 to 10 hours        12.45%
10 to 14 hours        8.30%
26 to 30 hours        6.72%
14 to 18 hours        4.40%
18 to 22 hours        4.40%

Note: Table made from bar graph.
How do you measure quality?

Description of Answer

                               Respondents

By sampling                      51.96%
Error rate per associate         14.71%
Other                            13.72%
We do not measure quality        12.75%
Error rate per 1000 responses     3.92%
for center
Number of e-mails required to     2.94%
solve one customer request

Note: Table made from bar graph.

We have noticed an ever-increasing interest by contact center managers in best practices related to e-mail management. For that reason, we have launched major initiatives in e-mail benchmarking. The above two graphs demonstrate some interesting results. Notice that the majority of e-mail is responded to in less than 6 hours. This is in spite of the fact that when we survey consumers, they are quite happy to have their e-mail answered in 24 hours, or even more. Regarding e-mail quality, the majority of managers seem to sample the e-mail that was sent and perform their quality check there. We would encourage a greater focus on ensuring that each e-mail is answered in one email, i.e., first time final, as we all strive to do in our telephone calls.

The Purdue benchmark research has been conducted since 1995. Purdue currently holds data for more than 5,400 call centers. To learn about how to participate in some of Purdue University's new benchmark research, please visit www.BenchmarkPortal.com.

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