As contact centres become ever-more-essential business assets, the measures used to evaluate their performance need to evolve apace, write Customer Science CEO Todd Gorsuch and Crayon IQ founder Audrey William.
Have recent years seen your organisation become ever more reliant on its contact centre to disseminate information, deal with all manner of customer interactions and function as a critical hub when crises strike?
For a growing number of Australian businesses of all stripes and sizes, the answer is a resounding yes. In 2025, the contact centre is the beating heart of the enterprise; a place where important customer relationships and accounts can be won – and lost.
So how well is yours serving you on this front? Are your contact centre agents rising to the challenge when it matters most; playing a pivotal role in the clinching of high value deals and providing the sort of standout support that saves relationships – and recurring revenue! – when things go wrong?
Peak performance or poor service?
Chances are, you can’t say with certainty. That’s because the average contact centre doesn’t have a reliable means of measuring such things – the customer experience that’s being delivered, the commercial outcomes and the business value creation that are ensuing as a result.
The metrics in common usage in this area of operations are blunt instruments which have ceased to be fit for purpose. They don’t reflect the context and complexity of the role contact centre agents are expected to play in today’s times, nor their success or otherwise in playing it.
Average call handle time and first call resolution rates, for example, only show how proficient your team is at closing cases and getting customers off the line. Whether those customers are left feeling satisfied or snarky can be anyone’s guess.
Of course, there is the good old net promoter score (NPS), a customer rating scale intended to reveal exactly this. It’s invariably cited as a definitive sign of how well or badly things are going, by boards and leadership teams.
Unfortunately, however, NPS is a far from reliable bellwether for how customers are thinking and feeling, and an even more inexact indicator of their intentions when it comes to making a repeat purchase or recommending your business to others.
Finding new ways to work out what’s working
Shifting the contact centre’s focus away from simple KPIs such as these towards outcomes – whether, for example, a customer signs up for a high value product or service in the days and weeks after a conversation with a contact centre agent – is no straightforward proposition.
For many businesses, it will call for the deployment of data analytics and AI, to recognise intent, gauge sentiment and track customers in real time, as they progress through the sales funnel, from contact centre to final close. These tools will allow organisations to link organisational value to the performance of the contact centre. To illustrate this point, healthcare industry contact centres can now understand how they impact health outcomes and use the levers of their performance to improve patient outcomes.
Putting these sophisticated new systems and processes in place is no job for an amateur. Niche skills and expert knowledge of the contact centre landscape are required and many organisations won’t have the resources they need inhouse.
Traditional systems integrators may fall short on this front too, accustomed as they are to configuring and customising complex contact centre software platforms, rather than designing and deploying radically different KPIs for the agents who use them.
Seeking specialist support
That’s why it can pay to draw on the expertise of seasoned specialists; individuals and organisations that have made a study of the connection between customer experience and commercial success.
Enlisting their services can help your organisation clarify what value is, how value is aligned and identify innovative ways to measure the contribution of contact centre agents and other frontline workers.
Choose the right partner and they’ll also be able to provide support with the change management piece. It’s a vital element of every successful transformation initiative but one that’s often neglected by organisations in their rush to introduce new platforms and processes.
Making the most of your contact centre in 2026
In today’s times, your contact centre is much more than merely a place where phone calls are handled and messages answered. It’s a key customer experience pillar and more nuanced and sophisticated metrics are needed to determine whether it’s helping or hindering your enterprise.
Armed with that information you’ll be able to optimise your people and processes to ensure you’re deriving maximum return from this critical asset. If you’re intent on achieving profitable growth in 2026 and beyond, it’s a step change you’d be well advised to consider.