5 Best Telemarketing and Call Center KPIs

The call center business is one of the most competitive industries regarding increasing sales, retaining customers, and optimizing call center performance metrics.

Call centers use key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the activities and performance of their call center agents, and there are both plenty of them to choose from.

Here, I will give you the five best call center KPIs working with outbound telemarketing and telesales.

Why are call center metrics important?

It is important for your business to identify and track the best call center KPIs based on the outcome you want to achieve. Identifying and tracking call center KPIs should lead to improved telemarketing performance.

Logically, there is no point in spending time identifying KPIs and measuring them if they are not put to good use. It is important to look at multiple KPIs in the right context. Simply being aware of a call center KPI is not enough.

Focus on your call center performance

Ultimately, our goal at Plecto is that our customers keep their performance in perspective at all times and that the employees engage with each other and each other’s numbers. If an employee breaks the scale, for example by having the lowest talk time with the highest number of sales, naturally, everyone would like to know how he did it.

Your call center analytics gives your employees an indication of their performance, on where they should be and how they can improve. This keeps them motivated and at the end of the day, we all need that feedback!

Let’s talk about the best outbound call center metrics and KPIs

In my position as Customer Success Manager at Plecto, I often get to assist customers with getting started with their call center dashboards for tracking key performance indicators for either inbound or outbound. 

The questions I get mostly relate to how to visualize KPIs in call centers in a meaningful and inspiring way for the employees in order to boost their performance, to enhance their motivation, and to increase sales.

Some of the questions that I often get is:

• What are the most common call center KPIs examples and outbound telesales metrics?
• How can I visualize my telemarketing metrics on a call center KPI dashboard?
• Which outbound call center performance metrics can motivate call center agents?

These are the exact questions that I often get from customers running an outbound call center or telemarketing agency, and it is these that have inspired me to write this blog post.

If these are some of the questions that you are also facing, then feel free to reach out. Get started with your own call center KPIs dashboard for free right here, and I will be ready to help you set it up.

Fundamentals of motivating call center agents 

I have collected five great KPIs for telemarketing and telesales. The idea is to inspire our customers in which call center KPIs to choose and how to visualize it on their call center performance dashboard. I have not put them in any order, and I’m sure that they are not too exhaustive.

But first, I would like to point out that I generally advise call centers to go with a simple setup and to visualize the same set of data in different ways, for example using different widgets. Keep the data realistic and measurable: The goal should be achievable and clearly defined.

It is a good idea to work with different timeframes. Break down the target into smaller sub-targets or work with a daily, weekly and monthly dashboard.

The key is to benchmark the performance and measure on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and have a call center KPI scorecard. If you have a large business and are receiving and making lots of calls, you can also consider hourly-based KPI tracking.

Here's the Five Best Call Center KPIs and metrics

1. Calls

This is obviously one of most important KPIs in telemarketing. But you’ll need to know how many calls and how to count them.

There are different outcomes of calls; for example, voicemail, dead number, receptionist and decision-maker (customer). You should take these outcomes into consideration: What outcome do you want to measure on?

If you’re struggling to come up with ideas here are some call center KPIs examples that you can use: number of calls answered, length of time spent on calls answered, and total number of calls made by each sales representative

These call center KPIs can be visualized on a Plecto dashboard in a ‘Number Box’ in order to display the total number of calls made for the entire team, or you can visualize it in a table and show calls per sales agent.

Calls per sales agent define how often your agents are on a task. This will tell you the level of activity among your employees. This information can help you determine when it is important to motivate your teams with a sales contest.

2. Sales

Naturally, the success of every business is dependent on its sales. However, if you want your salespeople to succeed, you must consistently motivate them in order to generate sales and close deals. There are several sales KPIs that your team could monitor.

One of the simplest solutions to boost motivation and spark that competitive spirit within your sales team is to add gamification elements to your call center KPI dashboard, for example notifications, badges or prizes!

When assessing the success on this metric, you’ll need to know how to measure this percentage; on a daily basis or monthly?

However, the monthly target can seem a bit overwhelming at the beginning of the month. If you want to see your call center’s sales KPIs right away you may consider showing the daily progress instead of monthly with the speedometer widget and thereby create a better overview for your employees.

3. Sales/Appointments Per Hour

In some cases, you may need to measure the rate of sales per hour or day depending on the difficulty of the task and the length of your sales cycle. This KPI calculates the number of sales or appointments and provides a measure of productivity for sales or appointments. By constantly monitoring this KPI, businesses can adjust their strategies or processes to maximize the number of sales/appointments per hour.

4. Appointments

Whatever the outcome, you need to measure those meetings booked and those that have been held. Seeing actual results will allow you to evaluate the current status, and try to find reasons why one or another meeting wasn’t booked.

Also, as one of the call center KPI could be seeing how many appointments end up as a success? You need to follow this data since you can see who is performing well and who needs improvements.

5. Calls Per Results

This is another valuable call center KPI for sales benchmarking. How many calls does it take to get a result? This is the Hit Rate and can be used to define how successful your employees are. The outbound team's efficiency may be evaluated with the use of this statistic, and can also be used to pinpoint areas in which further development is required. For instance, if the calls per results number is high this may be an indication that the team requires more training on call communication.

The Hit Rate is calculated by dividing the number of calls by the number of sales, appointments, answered calls, or whatever else you may consider a successful result.

Did you know that it takes 8 cold call attempts to reach a prospect?

Research by Telenet and Ovation Sales Group shows that in 2007, it took an average of 3.68 attempts to reach a prospect. Today, it takes 8 attempts.

Cold calling can be tough and demotivating, so your employees need to be persistent and determined. But it can be hard to stay motivated if they reach a voicemail or gets a rejection over and over again. 

This is where Plecto comes into the picture. With real-time call center dashboards, you can keep track of your agents performance across the office.

You and your sales team is provided with a unique overview where every result is rewarded and recognized – immediately and authentically. 

Plecto transforms how your call center agents are motivated using gamification and peer-to-peer recognition. Have your call center agents motivate each other and create a culture of support, collaboration, and achievement.