Industry Standard Stats

[AMT123]

Hi, I have searched the net but I am having difficulty finding any industry standards / benchmark with regard to Delay before Answer and % Abandoned.

I need to know these figures to know what is a reasonable SLA to agree with my customers.

Does anybody know them? Are they different for the UK to US?

If no-one has the official figures, any advice/guidelines would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[mbrown]

try www.benchmarkportal.com

[JoeB]

Before you rush to base your SLA on “standards” or benchmarks, you need to remember that different customers in different industries (and, like you suggest, different countries/cultures) have different expectations. Those differences are “averaged out” in the data you find in benchamrkportal.com.

We have done some research trying to understand the relationships between ASA (or delay before answer) and abandonment rate and have found that 1. it varies dramatically by industry, support type, customer type, etc.; and 2. it has some interesting non-linear characteristics that make it hard to predict the abandonment rate.

My suggestion is to get a rough idea from benchamrkportal.com, using segregated data that is the closest to your situation. Use this as a starting point to evaluate your customer expectations and your ability to meet them. In addition, if you have ACD statistics, there is a fairly straightforward analysis that can be conducted to understand customer behavior and expectations and make necessary the adjustments.

Finally, youÂ’d want to set up a monitoring and improvement process. In addition to measure SLA adherence, the ACD data analysis often reveals ways to relax the SLA parameters without any negative impact on customer satisfactionÂ….

Please let me know if you have any questions about the specifics of the process.

Joe Barkai
DIAGNOSTIC STRATEGIES
www.DiagnosticStrategies.com