Profitability measures
Another category of performance measures near and dear to your executives’ hearts includes those that indicate the inbound and outbound flow of money in the center, as indicated by the measures below. These next two measures are particularly important to catalog centers, where the calls typically focus on the placement of an order.
Conversion rate
The conversion rate refers to the percentage of transactions in which a sales opportunity is translated into an actual sale. It can be measured as an absolute number of sales or as a percentage of calls that result in a sale. Conversion rate should be tracked and measured for incoming calls, as well as outgoing calls, email transactions, and other web interactions.
Up-sell/Cross-sell rate
The up-sell rateorcross-sell rate is measured by many organizations as a success rate at generating revenue over and above the original order or intention of the call. It is becoming an increasingly common practice, not just for pure revenue-generating call centers but for customer service centers as well.
Although more prevalent in the telephone center, it is also an appropriate measure of performance for other communications channels.
Cost per call
The flip side of revenues involves the cost of running the organization. A common measure of operational efficiency is cost per call or cost per minute to handle the call workload, both in a simple call center as well as in a multichannel contact environment. This cost per call can be simply a labor cost per call, or it can be a fully loaded rate that includes wage rates in addition to telecommunications, facilities, and other services costs.
In setting cost per call, it is critical to define the components being used, and to use them consistently in evaluating how well the center is making use of financial resources over time. While commonly used to compare one company or site to another in benchmarking, this is not a good practice as the components included and the types of contacts will often vary.