Call Center Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Agent attrition rate over a year is calculated by which method?
- Number of agents who left divided by average headcount, times 100 (Correct answer)
- Number of new hires divided by total calls
- Total resignations minus total terminations
- Average tenure divided by 12 months
Correct answer: Number of agents who left divided by average headcount, times 100
Attrition (turnover) rate divides departures by average headcount for the period and expresses it as a percentage.
Question 2: A dashboard shows Service Level at 82/20 but abandonment at 12%. What is the most reasonable interpretation?
- Answered calls are fast, but many callers still give up, possibly during volume spikes (Correct answer)
- The metrics are contradictory and one must be wrong
- Abandonment always mirrors service level exactly
- Agents are exceeding quality targets
Correct answer: Answered calls are fast, but many callers still give up, possibly during volume spikes
Service Level only counts answered calls, so short bursts of understaffing can drive high abandonment even with good overall SL.
Question 3: Utilization differs from occupancy in that utilization typically measures what?
- Time spent on call work as a share of total paid or scheduled time (Correct answer)
- Time on calls as a share of logged-in available time only
- The percentage of calls answered in threshold
- The share of customers who self-serve
Correct answer: Time spent on call work as a share of total paid or scheduled time
Utilization uses total paid/scheduled time as the denominator, while occupancy uses only logged-in available time.
Question 4: Which practice is the biggest risk when tying agent bonuses to a single KPI like AHT?
- Agents may game the metric, such as prematurely ending calls, hurting customer experience (Correct answer)
- Agents will refuse to take breaks
- The metric will become impossible to measure
- Payroll costs will automatically double
Correct answer: Agents may game the metric, such as prematurely ending calls, hurting customer experience
Incentivizing one metric encourages gaming behaviors that optimize the number while damaging overall service quality.
Question 5: A balanced scorecard for call center agents ideally combines which types of measures?
- Efficiency, quality, and customer experience metrics together (Correct answer)
- Only speed metrics like AHT and ASA
- Only attendance records
- Only sales revenue figures
Correct answer: Efficiency, quality, and customer experience metrics together
A balanced scorecard blends efficiency (AHT), quality (QA scores), and experience (CSAT/FCR) so no single dimension is over-optimized.
Question 6: Repeat call rate is tracked as a companion metric to FCR because it captures what?
- Customers calling back within a set window about the same issue (Correct answer)
- The number of times a phone rings
- Calls transferred between departments
- Surveys completed more than once
Correct answer: Customers calling back within a set window about the same issue
Repeat call rate counts callbacks within a defined period (often 7 days) about the same issue, revealing unresolved contacts.
Question 7: Why should a manager review KPI trends at intervals (weekly or monthly) rather than reacting to a single day's numbers?
- Daily figures fluctuate with normal variation, so trends reveal real performance changes (Correct answer)
- KPIs are only legally reportable monthly
- Phone systems cannot produce daily reports
- Agents change schedules every day
Correct answer: Daily figures fluctuate with normal variation, so trends reveal real performance changes
Single-day data is noisy; trend analysis separates genuine shifts from routine variation like volume spikes.
Call Center Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) 5
Agent attrition rate over a year is calculated by which method?