Who remembers Sesame Street’s “One of These Things” game? In this game four objects or people are shown on TV while the narrator sings:
One of these things is not like the others.
One of these things just doesn’t belong.
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
Ready to play? Which of these things is not like the other?My height
My weight
My hairline
My age
That’s right! My weight is different than the others.
Why is that one different, you ask? Well, because the other three are out of my immediate control.
So, let’s shift this conversation away from children’s shows and my own personal challenges and move it into the customer service space, more specifically, first contact resolution (FCR).
FCR is a common customer service metric used to evaluate the percentage of customer issues that are fully resolved on the first contact. Five or so years ago organizations had an FCR goal in the 85% range, but with the massive uptick in easier issues being handled in self-service, that goal has dropped closer to 80% for many companies. Even with this lowered FCR goal many service and support organizations continue to struggle to achieve 80% FCR.
But what percentage of the issues your frontline staff receives is truly resolvable in one contact?
In other words, if you evaluate the issues that your reps face every day, are there some issue types that are “not like the others”? Are there some issues that are outside of their immediate control and unresolvable in a single contact? And are you including those in your evaluation of FCR?
If you are including those uncontrollable issues in your evaluation, that kind of seems like a deck that’s stacked against you, huh?!
How can you swing things back in your favor?
- Identify which issues are resolvable and unresolvable in one contact (you might use call dispositioning reports or CRM data to discover this information);
- Evaluate FCR only for the issues that can be resolved in one contact, or “Controllable Issues” (and FCR should still be evaluated at the site, team and rep level)
- Then, once you’ve identified FCR for the “Controllable Issues” category, you can dig deeper to find out if the challenges are with People or Process and begin your FCR improvement efforts there.
Of course, the “Uncontrollable Issues” still need some work, too, beginning with asking, “Why not?” for each of those issues. In other words, are they unresolvable in one contact for good reason (legal, regulatory, etc.) or are there issue types that could be moved to the “Controllable” bucket with small changes to process or policy?
Your starting point is identifying which contacts “are not like the others”, and you’ll not only find a more accurate measure of FCR, you’ll be able to quickly identify *how* to make improvements to boost FCR performance even more.
CEB Customer Contact Leadership Council