Recap of CallTalk.TV OnLine Radio Show with Adam Cincoski of Optum Health discussing Service Level/ASA

Our October 28th episode of CallTalk focused on what I call the "grand daddies" of call center performance metrics: Service Level and Average Speed of Answer, or ASA. With my guest, Adam Cincoski, we explored whether the traditional emphasis is still relevant. We drew on fresh research data from a large number of respondents that showed the following high level information:
- 95.2% of all call centers track Service Level or ASA
- 73.6% of call center managers said that ASA is one of the criteria on which they are judged; in fact 10.5% said they "live and die" by their Service Level ASA metrics.
- 78.3% of all managers reported that they normally achieve their ASA targets.
So it is clear that the importance of the metric lives on, and is a major KPI (Key Performance Indicator) weighing on the minds of most managers. How the ASA is determined, however, seems to be evolving.
"In the beginning, there was Service Level, and the best practice Service Level was 80% of calls answered within 20 seconds".
Still today, over 20% of call centers report that the original 80/20 rule rules them!
However, the nuance in determining the appropriate service level for one's own industry sector and enterprise is getting greater and, it appears, more customer-driven:
- Almost 12% of respondents indicated that they do statistical analyses against customer satisfaction, meaning that they calibrate their target ASA levels according to customer feedback. This would cause them to have more stringent Service Level if that were required to keep satisfaction high, or conversely, allow them to relax Service Level (and save money!) if feedback showed that customers did not mind waiting a few extra rings, other things being equal.
- Over 12% of respondents indicated that they do statistical analyses against abandon rates. This allows them to test their callers' patience by stretching ASA, as long as their callers stay with them. Again, this would allow them to potentially save money. Naturally, the analysis should include call value, since abandons may cancel the opportunities for real revenues. In fact, it should be noted that almost 7% of companies provide faster-than-normal response times for strategic and economic reasons. These are centers who have determined that the staffing costs that accompany aggressive ASA's pay for themselves in real financial returns.
- Over 9% benchmark against industry peers to determine a competitive ASA.
What this tells us is that a notable minority of today's call centers are not just accepting the dictums of the past. They are seeking to optimize this KPI in the context of other metrics (caller satisfaction, abandon, average call value, etc.) so as to balance the costs and benefits of their Service Level.
Naturally, there are also many managers who would like to be more analytical and optimal in determining ASA, but are simply working hard to keep up with the calls they receive using the agents they are given. In fact, 16% said that their service level is mainly the result of their budget and staffing, rather than a strategic choice.
Overall, however, it appears that this most venerable of metrics is being put under the microscope and is being placed in context of other KPIs, rather than on a solitary throne to rule by itself. For our part we encourage this as a best practice approach to managing Service Level/ASA.