The metric that matters the most for improving customer experience in the new multichannel world.
Introducing One Contact Resolution Metric
Given so many customers are using multiple contact channels to resolve the same inquiry and problem and the huge impact a customer’s contact channel experience has on customer satisfaction and retention, organizations must invest in measuring the customer’s experience when using a contact channel or multiple contact channels to resolve an inquiry or problem. Delivering a world-class customer experience for contact channel usage is critical to an organization’s success and, therefore, SQM announces a new metric to measure this experience—One Contact Resolution (OCR).
SQM is proud to introduce the new OCR metric definition.
Very simply put, OCR is the metric that measures the use of one contact and one channel to resolve an inquiry or problem.
The benefits of delivering OCR, from a customer’s point of view, are the following:
- Their inquiry or problem is resolved effortlessly; after all, what customers really want is to resolve their inquiry or problem as effortlessly as possible.
- Higher satisfaction for channel experience because they only had to use one contact and one channel to resolve their inquiry or problem.
The benefits of delivering OCR, from an organization’s point of view, are the following:
- Channel containment, such that the channel is effective at resolving an inquiry or problem, and therefore other channels are not necessary.
- OCR provides insights into channel containment from a customer perspective unlike internal measurements. For example, only the customer can tell the organization if they expected the channel to resolve their inquiry or problem. In essence, the OCR metric is a channel containment measure from a customer perspective.
- OCR provides insights into the areas of the organization that require improvement.
- High OCR performance increases Csat, customer retention and referrals.
A whopping 20% of customers who used a call center did so because the self-service contact channel they used, prior to contacting the call center, failed to meet their expectation of resolving their inquiry or problem. Therefore, OCR is the new metric that matters the most for improving customer experience in the new multichannel world. Most contact centers are unaware of how many customers try to resolve their inquiry or problem using other contact channels prior to, or after, contacting the contact center. In addition, most contact centers are not aware of the negative impact that the use of two or more contact channels to resolve the same inquiry or problem has on Csat and retention. Given that so many customers are using multiple contact channels to resolve the same inquiry and problem, contact centers should measure both FCR and OCR metrics.
The diagram on the facing page shows the difference between FCR and OCR performances when a call center was one of the contact channels used. The data reveals that OCR is 11% lower than FCR. The reason for this difference is that FCR is based on customers resolving their inquiry on the first call and considers only the usage with the call center contact channel. Put differently, FCR does not take into consideration whether or not other contact channels were used. Conversely, OCR factors in the customer being able to resolve their inquiry on the first call and not having to use another contact channel prior to, or after, calling the call center.
OCR is a tougher metric to achieve than FCR because the calculation of OCR factors in whether or not other channels were used. For the average call center, an alarming 41% of customers are not able to resolve their inquiry or problem on the first call. Given that only 59% of customers have an OCR experience, it should be viewed as a huge wake-up call for the contact center industry to start measuring the customer’s entire experience (i.e., all contact channels used) when trying to resolve the same inquiry or problem.
SQM truly believes that of all the contact center metrics, FCR and OCR are the metrics that matter the most, which is the reason why SQM focuses on both FCR and OCR. These metrics drive world class customer satisfaction and retention. The FCR metric should not be confused with the OCR metric. Again, FCR is based on customers resolving their inquiry on the first call and factors in that only the call center contact channel was used and does not take into consideration whether or not other contact channels were used. On the other hand, OCR is based on customers resolving their inquiry on the first call and does factor in whether or not other contact channels were used.
This article is excerpted from SQM’s book, One Contact Resolution, www.sqmgroup.com .