Our Team

Our Awards

Social Impact

Newsroom

Locations

Careers

About Us

Contact

Do Not Sell my Personal Information

Cookie Preferences

Humanity-in-the-Loop

Industries

Insights

Investor Relations

TELUS International (Cda) Inc. and its subsidiaries use TELUS Digital for branding purposes.

Privacy Shield Framework

Privacy Policy

Modern Slavery Act Transparency Statement

Solutions

Subscribe to Newsletter

Technology Partners

Website User Terms

Icon facebook

Icon youtube

Icon linkedin

Technology

Banking, Financial Services & Insurance

Automotive

Healthcare

Communications & Media

Games

Retail & Ecommerce

Travel & Hospitality

infobrief

Guide

Resource Type Article

Article

case-studies thumb

Case Study

Preventing fraud for a global tech company in the travel and hospitality space image with fern in background

TI resource case 900x510

Video

whitepapers thumb

Research & Reports

brochures thumb

Brochure

Solution Update

Podcast Type Image

Podcast

Discover how TELUS Digital transformed customer support for a leading cryptocurrency platform, scaling the program within weeks while achieving high customer satisfaction scores.

Individual reviewing a financial platform on their mobile phone, laptop and monitor. 

crypto-case-study-HERO

Reduction in Average Handle Time within 3 months

Reduction in Customer First Response Time

Elevating the customer experience for a leading cryptocurrency platform

GAS report image #2

GenAI safety (GAS) model benchmark

Is your AI secure or do you just hope it is?

As the telecom industry faces mounting costs and shifting customer expectations, AI can turn challenges into opportunities. Learn more about the use cases.

Photo of two people in a restaurant interacting with their phones and smiling, meant to symbolize generative AI applications in the telecom industry

generative ai telecom

How telecom brands can seize industry opportunities with AI

Join us for an enlightening discussion with two pioneers in the field of AI: Tommy Guy, principal applied researcher at Microsoft Copilot Studio and Steve Nemzer, senior director of AI growth and innovation at TELUS Digital.

Webinar thumbnail 800x450

Overcoming the challenges of AI agent creation, training and evaluation

Get safety benchmarks across 34 leading AI models, live purple teaming tactics and governance frameworks your team can act on — straight from the CISOs, researchers and trust & safety leaders doing it in production.

Uncharted Blog #1

Uncharted: Nine expert sessions on AI safety & security

QA & Testing

Digital Strategy 

AI Use Cases

Data & AI Trends

CX Analytics & Metrics

Copilots

Platform Integrity

Digital Transformation

Generative AI

Agentic AI & Automation

Data Collection

Generational Support

Fraud Prevention

Adobe Experience Cloud 

AI Strategy

Web & Mobile App Development 

Responsible AI

AI Best Practices

Fuel iX Platform

Computer Vision

CCaaS

Support Channels

Data Validation & Relevance

Digital Experience Best Practices

Agent Assist

Financial Crime and Compliance

Conversational AI & Voice Tech

Outsourcing Partnerships

B2B Sales

Customer Journey

CX Trends

Fortify

Digital Marketing Services 

AI-Powered CX

Agent Trainer

CX Best Practices

Scaling & Growth

Linguistic Annotation

UX Design

Omnichannel Customer Journey

Content Moderation

Outsourcing Locations

IT Service Management

Cybersecurity

IT Best Practices

Personalization & Loyalty

Physical AI

Data Annotation

Digital Experience Trends 

Cloud Infrastructure & Migration

Your trusted Google Cloud partner is now part of TELUS Digital's global innovation network. Same exceptional service, same dedicated team, now backed by enterprise-scale solutions and resources to take your business further. 

Badal is now TELUS Digital

Bitstrapped is now TELUS Digital

DefinedLogic is now part of TELUS Digital, delivering the same trusted expertise with expanded resources. From strategy to execution, we take on bigger challenges, move faster, and help you succeed in today’s digital landscape.

DefinedLogic is now TELUS Digital - Your trusted partner just leveled up

Gear Inc. has been acquired by TELUS Digital. This strategic partnership drives greater value to our clients through expanded capabilities and geographical scale.

Gear Inc. is now TELUS Digital

Since 2008, GM2 has partnered with leading brands to design, build, and scale digital products across the full development lifecycle. Now, as TELUS Digital, we’re bringing that experience together with expanded global capabilities—allowing us to deliver even greater impact for our clients.

GM2 is now TELUS Digital

As a unified company, TELUS Digital Morocco will continue to deliver exceptional CX services along with an expanded solution set covering GenAI CX, AI Data Solutions, Trust & Safety and more.

Welcome! Humania BPO is now TELUS International

Same great team, now combining elite digital product development with global enterprise solutions. Explore our enhanced capabilities today.

WillowTree is now TELUS Digital

First Call Resolution (FCR) is a critically important metric in a call center, particularly because it’s so closely tied to Customer Satisfaction. This article offers techniques for measuring FCR, and also concrete ways to improve it.

Customer Experience

Getting precise measurements on First Call Resolution (FCR) is about as easy as getting work-at-home agents to shower on a daily basis. The good news? Neither are essential for optimum contact center performance and customer experiences.

Callers don’t know and don’t care if an agent hasn’t changed out of his pajamas in three days, provided said agent provides courteous, efficient and effective service. And callers don’t care if your center knows how to precisely measure FCR – they just want you to achieve it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can just sweep FCR measurement under the rug. You still need to make an effort to gauge where your contact center is at with FCR in order to know if you’re getting better or worse at achieving it (you know, the whole “You can’t manage what you can’t measure” cliché).

Unfortunately, because FCR is such a difficult metric to measure, many managers just throw their arms up in frustration and ask rhetorically, “What’s the use in trying?”

The connection between First Call Resolution and customer satisfaction

I’ll tell you what the use in trying is: Few other contact center metrics have as big an impact on Customer Satisfaction. A study conducted by Customer Relationship Metrics found that “CSAT ratings will be 35%-45% lower when a second call is made for the same issue.” Another study, conducted by Service Quality Measurement Group, revealed that for every 1% improvement in FCR, you get a 1% improvement in CSAT. Findings from a study on FCR conducted by ICMI further support that claim: More than three in four study respondents that reported an increase in FCR over the previous 12 months indicated a resulting increase in CSAT.

Add to all this the fact that improving FCR lowers operational costs (fewer callbacks = less $) and decreases agent burnout (fewer callbacks = fewer customer tirades), and it’s pretty easy to see “what the use in trying” is.

The main point is this: It doesn’t matter that precise FCR measurement is next to impossible; what matters is that you keep digging at it to get close – and keep implementing improvement initiatives to continuously drive the FCR rate up (and customer dissention, agent attrition and overall costs down).

Some effective First Call Resolution measurement methods

Top customer care organizations use a combination of measurement methods to ‘catch FCR at all angles’ and, thus, arrive at what is the most accurate rate possible.

Among the various FCR measurement methods are:

Repeat-call tracking technology – tracks whether or not a customer calls the contact center a second (or third or fourth…) time regarding an issue they previously called about. While this technology is a very useful tool, it’s not the be all and end all in in FCR measurement, as some customers may not call back even if their issue wasn’t resolved. For instance, they might instead contact the center via another channel (e.g., email, chat, social media), or perhaps even defect to the competition out of frustration.

Post-call customer surveys – conducted (via IVR, live surveyor, or email) immediately or very soon after a call and asking the customer whether or not the their issue or inquiry was taken care of completely. This is an effective, customer-centric FCR measurement method, but relying solely on surveys won’t provide the most complete FCR picture possible. For one, not all customers (not even CLOSE to all) opt to complete post-call surveys. Secondly, often a caller will think their issue was fully resolved during a call and will indicate so on the survey, but then the agent or somebody else doesn’t follow through with what needs to be done to complete the resolution, resulting in a later callback.

Quality monitoring – entails having internal quality monitoring staff listen to and rate the call as “resolved” or “unresolved” (as well as to confirm that it was the caller’s first contact with the contact center on the issue in question). The trouble with this measurement method is that it fails to take into consideration a crucial component: the customer’s perspective. Only the customer really knows if their issue has been completely resolved. Having internal QA folks deem whether FCR has occurred requires a judgment call – really just an educated guess.

First Call Resolution improvement initiatives

In addition to utilizing all three (or at least the first two) of the above measurement methods to get a good idea of where things stand FCR-wise, top contact centers conduct root cause analysis (often using speech analytics) to gain insight into when and why FCR isn’t happening. Armed with such data and insight, the center is able to implement focused FCR improvement initiatives.

Educating staff on the importance and impact of FCR. FCR won’t magically improve because you want it to or because you simply start measuring it. Agents need to know what FCR means and understand how improving it will not only enhance the customer experience, but also reduce agents’ urge to cut themselves on calls and during breaks.

Providing agents with the training and resources to effectively resolve contacts. Even if staff fully understand the importance of FCR and how it impacts them, if they lack the skills and knowledge to resolve calls, or lack immediate access to the information needed to do so, your FCR rate is going to be lower than Tiger Woods’ typical score on a front nine.

Ensuring that there are no conflicting performance objectives hindering FCR achievement. Making FCR a key performance goal in your center but then punishing agents for not handling a certain number of calls per hour, or for going a little over the desired AHT average, will hinder your center’s chances of achieving FCR success and enhance the chances of an agent strangling you with his or her headset cord.

**Empowering agents to improve FCR-related processes.**Your agents know customers and customer care better than anyone, assuming your hiring and training programs don’t blow. Smart managers actively solicit suggestions and insight from agents regarding how to enhance FCR performance.

Given the opportunity, agents will tell you what tools, training and workflows are lacking. They’ll also tell you what processes, metrics and torture devices are interfering with their ability to effectively resolve customer issues.

Insights Overview

Categories

Industries

Resource Types

Glossary

Customer Experience

First Call Resolution: Difficult to measure, dangerous to ignore

Be the first to know