In my last post, I shared why building strong internal partnerships is critical to the success of contact centers and their leaders, and I outlined some practical ways to establish and maintain these partnerships for sustained benefit.

Today, let’s dig deeper into how tracking and sharing key metrics drives greater collaboration and fuels innovation that can deliver extraordinary customer experiences.

As a contact center executive, I depended on key metrics to understand my contact center’s performance and work toward optimizing it. Sharing those metrics with my internal partners helped them make better business decisions within their own functions. It also helped inform decisions for the organization as a whole, further strengthening those partnerships and extending their benefit.

Let’s take a closer look at how this collaboration specifically works with those who lead your finance group.

Finance Has a Huge Impact

 Successful Contact Center Leaders Track and Share Key Metrics

Because finance controls your budget, it impacts everything you do in your contact center, from budgeting to growth forecasting. I would argue no other department has a bigger effect on what you do.

That’s why it’s critical to maintain close collaboration. Like all important relationships, though, it takes time to understand what’s important to your finance partner and how you can deliver value.

Start building this important relationship now and have it in place before you run into issues and need help. One of the best ways to begin is by understanding and sharing relevant contact center metrics that can help finance make well-informed business decisions that affect the contact center and beyond. Remember, the ultimate goal is to ensure that it’s easy for customers to do business with your company and constantly improve the customer experience.

Cost Per Interaction and Cost Per Agent

If you’re already tracking your interaction volumes and cost per interaction, then you’re in good shape. Those are important metrics to give to the finance team so they have a baseline understanding of your contact center’s volume and expenses. To establish cost estimates, they’ll also want to know your cost per agent, including both direct and indirect costs.

Abandon Rate, Service Levels and Churn Rate

Other key metrics to share include abandon rate, service levels and churn rate. These numbers help finance understand, for example, if service levels are affecting customer churn. They can use this data to analyze if service levels are increasing or decreasing, and if customer churn is trending in a positive or negative direction, then make decisions to positively impact it.

This information is important because it dovetails with the forecasts of other departments, such as sales. For example, if the sales team is forecasting closing a high number of new deals, finance will want to know if your contact center has adequate resources to support those potential new customers. It’s critical information that affects budgets organization-wide.

Sharing Metrics Benefits All

Sharing these key metrics with finance leaders helps them better understand your business so they can make more informed decisions on issues that impact your contact center. Other stakeholders in key departments. such as IT, product teams and marketing, would also benefit from seeing your relevant metrics. Tailor what you share with each group to deliver the most value and bolster the relationships long-term

Big breakthroughs and progress can’t happen in silos. Working collaboratively through two-way information sharing generates the kind of energy that fuels growth, innovation and creativity. Developing value-aligned partnerships that focus on common goals and complementary strengths is key to ensuring successful outcomes for all.

The ultimate goal of this information sharing is to help your company’s business units work better together. When they do, customers will find it easier to do business with you and have better experiences.

Download the e-book

Get more in-depth information about how to build internal partnerships in the Serenova e-book, 5 Critical Actions for Successful Contact Center LeadersYou’ll also learn about four other important actions contact center leaders should take, including why it’s important to develop your personal leadership philosophy and resources for professional development.

Jen Jackson is Vice President of Customer Success at Serenova, where she leads the global team dedicated to helping customers achieve quantifiable business outcomes and exceptional customer experiences. Her career includes deep contact center experience and leadership roles at Dell, as well as emerging companies like Kinnser Software (now WellSky) and Neverfail Group. Jen is known for a people-first philosophy of leadership aligned with today’s workforce and technology.