Your Customers Don’t Care about Efficiency Metrics

For as long as I’ve been working in the contact center space, the contact center space has been going on about transforming from a cost center to a revenue center. And as much as we resist being put in this “cost center” box, it’s not entirely unearned.

Sorry, but it’s true!

Evidence of our obsession with cost reduction and efficiency can be found in almost every part of the contact center: the metrics we track, the technologies we use (and how we use them), how we staff, and how that staff is incentivized—everything.

Let’s take this approach to an absurd extreme—you know what’s really cheap? Hanging up on every customer who asks to speak to an agent. Sure, you’ll churn some customers, but hey, supporting fewer customers will be so much cheaper!

You might say, “Christina, get real—no one does that!”

No? I’ve encountered several companies that consider anyone hanging up on their IVR a “contained contact.” Sometimes the IVR hangs up on the customer proactively! And I’ve certainly seen average-handle-time (AHT) pressure drive agent behaviors that are directly counter to customer-centric outcomes.

The reality? All sorts of unsavory things happen when we prioritize (and incentivize) short-term impact over long-term outcomes. Like reinforcing the contact center’s cost center reputation, which influences how decisions are made; how resources—like budgets—are allocated; and how success is measured by those in charge. These tactics have limited the contact center’s potential to contribute to revenue growth and customer loyalty. The tone has been set.

Trading Off

It will take some effort to untangle decades of efficiency-focused tactics that saved costs in the short term while being blind to the long term. Most contact centers do not have a well-toned muscle for connecting in-call measures to longer-term business outcomes like lifetime value or churn.

When we think about efficiency metrics or cost savings measures, there’s always a trade-off, whether you measure it or not.

For example, if you crunch down AHT too far, you risk sacrificing first-contact resolution. But high resolution rates have strong connections to higher CX quality and loyalty.

If you knew that churn rate was five times higher for customers who had to call back two times to resolve their issues, might you have made different choices about your aggressive AHT “targets”? I’d hope your answer is yes.

It’s Time to Recalibrate

I spend a lot of time talking to customer service pros about their generative AI strategies. Many leaders wish to pursue cost savings via AI or automation today, so that they might focus on revenue programs tomorrow.

To quote the wisdom of that one Old El Paso commercial: “Why don’t we have both?”

And for those of you who don’t have a 2009 taco commercial seared into your temporal lobe, my condolences, but what I mean is: We should be optimizing for both outcomes, together. This isn’t a step one, step two kind of thing.

Generative AI is already proving itself capable of improving agent efficiency. It won’t be all that long before your agents’ handle time is too lean to cut any further.

So Now What?

If you’re not already pulling together data from other systems to identify the impact your customer service interactions have on broader business outcomes (e.g., churn, lifetime value, conversion), it’s time to change that.

Shift your thinking from optimizing the cost of each interaction to maximizing the profitability of all interactions. Subtle shift, but it’s an important one.

You might find that you are called to loosen restrictive efficiency targets in the interest of giving conversations the time they need. You may find that it is more profitable to staff your center to comfortably meet demand, rather than maximizing occupancy. You’ll have time (and money) to invest in diversifying your teams’ skill sets so that they can support revenue-driving initiatives.

I know this might feel like a tall ask. It’s not easy—but it is essential.

Unfortunately for you, I’ve grown fond of ending my column with a truly bizarre analogy (is this my thing? It might be my thing):

We’ve been tightening this belt for a long time—it’s time we remembered why we wear pants in the first place. 

Christina McAllister is senior analyst, Forrester Research, covering customer service and contact center technology, strategy, and operations.

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