So, you use a call center because it’s cheaper, easier, and allows you to never miss out on a call.

Congratulations! What’s the next step? Evaluating its effectiveness, of course!

Start with a clear strategy in place. Where is the call center succeeding? Where does it fail to help your firm grow its clientele? There is a plethora of data available to you when you use a call center, but it’s entirely useless without a goal in mind. Once you’ve established your firm’s objectives, you can use KPIs (key performance indicators) to accurately assess the success of the call center you use. Tailor and track these KPIs to best impact your firm’s growth.

Call Volume Trends

Compiling this data over a period of time can help you recognize when to expect business to slow down or pick up. Perhaps you get an influx of workers’ compensation calls as a particularly hot summer begins. Or you notice most personal injury calls after midnight end up not being legitimate case leads. Identify your peak hours and what amount of traffic to expect. Use the call center data to your advantage and keep track of patterns, whether it be hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.

Conversion rate

How many calls to the call center are converted to leads? Crunch the numbers and see how many calls are being received and how many result in a positive conversion. Know your average statistics, and keep track on a weekly and monthly basis. Set goals and minimums to help boost effectiveness. This data, coupled with consistent internal follow-up, is key to improving your success with a call center.

Average Handle Time (AHT)

The average handle time speaks to the operational efficiency of your call center. This metric measures the length of the call from start to finish. Consider how long the average call is and identify the AHT for a converted lead. The goal of most legal call centers is to reduce this time while still converting quality leads. For example, the call center eGeneration Marketing uses has an AHT of 2.5 minutes. We also correlate longer AHT with better quality leads. If you find that poor quality case leads have a longer AHT, this may indicate that the staff needs more training on your intake requirements.

Cost per call

The Cost per Call (CPC) metric is as simple as it is crucial. The basic formula is CPC = Total Cost of All Calls/ Total Number of Calls. If you haven’t already, set a goal for this KPI and check in on a monthly basis to insure you are profiting from your investment in this particular call center.

Customer Satisfaction

When hiring a call center as your legal intake staff, you are the customer. Take a genuine look at these gathered KPIs and don’t forget that the call center is supposed to make your life easier and your firm grow. Is the call center staff friendly and willing to help your potential clients? Are you satisfied with the quality of the leads you are receiving and how frequently you receive them? There are plenty of legal intake call centers to choose from, so be honest when evaluating your own satisfaction with their performance.

With these five useful metrics, you are able to quantify and analyze several important aspects of your call center. While there are a variety of KPIs at your disposal, it’s important to consider ones tailored to your industry as a legal professional. The five metrics above will transform your relationship with your call center as well as streamline your firm’s intake process.