Have you ever experienced issues with a product or service you availed of? You then call the hotline indicated on a business’ website, and someone answers after a few minutes. You feel a gush of relief when the person on the line asks, “How may I help you today?” After a few exchanges, all your issues have been resolved, and you end up being a good prospect for the brand in the future. That is how important contact centers are in a business.
The role of call centers as a contact center channel continues to grow over the years. It has become an essential part of running a company by providing the best customer service possible. They connect a brand with its customers and maintain a good relationship with them that businesses reap even in the long run.
With rapid changes in the industry, including evolving metrics and call center solutions, you can stay ahead of the game by knowing the latest trends to adapt to. If you’ve read our list of Eye-Opening Call Center Statistics to Know in 2024, we gathered new statistics and trends to create this updated list. Here are top call center statistics that can help you understand customer expectations and how you can enhance your performance.
What is a Call Center?
A call center is a centralized hub that handles customer support services and brings a brand closer to its consumers. They can function either as outbound or inbound call centers.
Call centers are part of a broader group of contact centers that may include other channels. Different types of contact centers include phone support, live chat, email, and other websites and applications. Today, over 75% of call center organizations and outsourcing companies offer omnichannel capabilities that provide customers with a positive experience.
The importance of call centers lies in their function to enhance customer experience. This remains to be one of the most essential call center metrics at 95% according to contact center professionals.
Look into these key call center statistics to stay up-to-date and ready to enhance your business’ efficiency.
HIGHLIGHT: Important Call Center Statistics You Need to Know
1. The average U.S. customer satisfaction index is at 77.8 over 100 in the last quarter of 2023.
This is a 0.9% increase from 2021, with the pandemic affecting all industries.
2. The global contact center market reached $340 billion dollars in 2020 and is expected to rise to a value of $496 billion dollars by the year 2027.
Contact center operations are bound to become one of the most productive and profitable sectors in the world, with experts projecting its tremendous growth annually.
3. The call center industry standard is answering 80% of calls in 20 seconds.
Efforts are being made to improve those numbers to 90% within 15 seconds.
4. The call center’s benchmark for an average cost per call for every customer is $2.70-$5.60.
Looking into any steady rise or spike in this metric should help you navigate your business’ expenses accordingly.
5. 92% or more than 9 in 10 companies are investing in AI-driven personalization to support their customer service.
The adoption of AI increases their efforts towards personalization. It also increases efficiency and provides more accurate responses.
Timely and accurate responses have always been an integral component of every customer’s contact center experience. And with the availability of new call center technologies, consumers expect more streamlined processes.
7. 95% of contact center pros consider customer satisfaction as the most important call center metric.
Every call center aims to deliver the highest level of satisfaction to its customers. It’s no surprise that customer satisfaction tops the list of the most important contact center and customer service metrics that businesses prioritize.
8. Experts reported lower employee turnover rates in virtual call centers.
Call centers as a whole have become a constant subject of discussions about high turnover rates. But with the emergence of remote call center solutions and home-based call contact center jobs, experts have reported lower turnover rates in VCC compared to traditional, in-house call centers.
9. 79% of callers get rerouted at least once.
With a high percentage of calls with a customer service representative getting rerouted, contact centers are implementing intent-based call routing technology to improve contact center performance.
10. AI-powered insights can significantly improve conversion rates for call centers.
Every call answered is an opportunity for businesses to analyze important customer data. The use of AI-powered insights allows call centers to understand the behaviors of customers through effective call data analytics. This technology will also help businesses design more personalized products and services.
Top Call Center Stats to Know in 2025: On Customer Experience, Call Quality and AI.
Good Call Center Experiences Encourage Customer Loyalty
11. Around 95% of customers say that having a great customer service experience makes them more likely to purchase again.
A business’ customer service is as important as its product. This is why customer satisfaction scores are really important in determining whether a business is capable of providing excellent service to its customers.
12. 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand after one bad experience, and 92% of customers will completely abandon a company after two to three negative experiences.
Customers can be very lenient when it comes to the quality of their experiences. But there’s also a small chunk of the consumer population that tends to switch brands after a single unpleasant experience.
13. In 2023 data, 56% of consumers become repeat buyers after a personalized experience.
Customer loyalty is becoming increasingly important to companies, especially with the growing number of competitors in every industry. To keep customers loyal to your company, customizing your service to cater to their expectations is key.
14. 69% of business leaders are investing in personalization despite economic uncertainty.
This shows how much businesses value the role of great customer service in the industry. Establishing connections and a more customized approach shows how much a business values its customers. This translates to loyal clients.
15. Around 45% of customers say that they feel annoyed or upset when they are kept in the queue for 5–15 minutes.
In a 2017 study by American Express, two-thirds of consumers would accept hold times of less than two minutes, and 13% said that there should be no hold times at all.
A Proactive Approach is What Customers Expect from Call Centers
16. 71% of customers expect businesses to already know why they are calling.
Customers want to be understood. Once they reach out to you, they expect you to have an idea of how to help them without being redirected to other agents or departments.
17. 53% of customers have to repeat their reason for calling multiple agents.
It is important for call centers to have the basic information of their customers to be capable of providing the assistance that they need. Many call centers use customer relationship management (CRM) systems to organize and manage their customer data.
18. Inbound voice jumped to 55.4% in 2023 from 53.5% in the previous year.
Voice support continues to be the preferred contact center of customers despite the adoption of digital channels. This channel is most effective in resolving complex issues and handling customers with more empathy.
19. Latest call center statistics show that around 28% of customers that are placed on hold, drop the call after 5 minutes or less.
This also goes along with the average time it takes for agents to answer calls, which is 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Contact centers measure the average waiting time to make sure that all customer queries are properly and promptly handled. Being mindful of call center metrics also improves contact center efficiency.
How the presence (and the lack) of call center technology affect call center performance.
20. 50% of call center managers revealed that they didn’t have enough automation in their call centers.
Despite AI and automation’s recorded active use worldwide in 2024, a significant percentage of call center managers still believe that they didn’t have enough of these two technologies to enhance their call center performance.
21. 86% of call center agents feel that they don’t have adequate and proper resources to effectively deal with customers.
Personalizing customer experiences and increasing close rates are paramount to giving each customer a pleasant contact center experience. With this, call centers are encouraged to adopt the use of conversion intelligence data.
22. 60% of failed First Contact Resolution attempts are due to an agent’s inability to access the correct data.
Data management also plays a crucial role in every call center. When agents don’t have access to the right data at the right time, customers might be frustrated.
23. Roughly 20% to 30% of call volume is about unresolved customer issues.
Unresolved customer issues are indicative of a call center’s inefficiency. When unresolved issues pile up, call centers should implement a ticketing system to effectively track and monitor unresolved customer concerns.
24. Integrating new contact center tools is one of the most challenging processes in contact centers, according to contact center managers.
Following call center trends for 2024 may look easy to you. But for contact center managers, it’s a challenge. They specifically point out the integration of new call center tools into existing systems as the most time-consuming and critical part of the process.
25. 49% of business owners said that they use a call center software or a call center knowledge base.
Due to its active use worldwide by 2024, more and more business owners are investing in creating knowledge bases to enhance productivity and encourage self-service customer support.
An Omnichannel Experience: Artificial Intelligence (AI) market in the call center industry is rapidly growing for enhanced efficiency.
26. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in the call center segment are currently worth $1.8 billion in 2023 and are expected to reach $17.05 billion by 2032.
AI is everywhere. The industry is among the fastest-growing sub-sectors in the market. Industry experts are predicting rapid growth in the AI sector, with more and more organizations implementing AI for their business processes.
27. Speech analytics software is growing rapidly at 22.14% CAGR (2021-2026), potentially valued at over $5B by 2026.
Using AI to manage data from customer interactions, inquiries, order tracking, returns, and other forms of support can be done simultaneously. Overall, this may increase call center efficiency.
28. Predictive analytics improve efficiency and productivity by 60%.
For a more proactive approach, call center operations have turned to using statistics, historical data, and modeling techniques to predict possible outcomes. Businesses use call center software to help them predict peak call times and hold times. It also reroutes calls to contact center agents that can handle their needs.
29. Around 60% of customer service agents say that AI helps them save time in routing calls and processing inquiries.
A call center receives an average of 4,400 calls, with 48 missed calls in a month. With the help of AI, call center agents can handle more calls and improve their average abandonment rate.
30. Global contact center as a service (CCaaS) market was valued at a whopping $3.89 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach USD 11.74 billion by 2028.
Call center leaders turn to CCaaS to provide omnichannel support.
Metrics to Improve Your Call Center Productivity
Call center metrics and KPIs help you look into data from all the contact center solutions and employee strategies you use to operate. Analyzing these based on performance standards allows you to gauge your level of efficiency and effectiveness, as well as the areas you can improve.
Look into these contact center metrics to assess areas of improvement for your business. Here are essential call center performance metrics to look into.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Customer satisfaction, or CSAT is an important performance metric in measuring if your customer is happy with their experience with your business. A high rate in CSAT indicates customer satisfaction, while a lower rate may indicate areas that need to be improved.
The call center performance standard for a good CSAT score is around 75% to 84%.
Some tips to improve your business’ performance are to conduct survey feedback to look into points for improvement and identify patterns. Address the points for improvement while continuously seeking customer feedback on implemented changes and other suggestions they prefer to experience.
First Call Resolution (FCR)
The FCR metrics help measure the number of customer concerns resolved on the first call. This indicates the capability of a call center agent to provide immediate solutions to their client’s needs.
This indicator allows you to look into the competence and efficiency of your customer support. Generally, call centers achieve an FCR rate of 70–75%. This is considered ‘good’. While global call centers usually reach 80%.
When you make sure that customer support, needs, and concerns are quickly responded to and resolved during the first call, this helps you retain more customers. With good FCR, customers don’t need to do a follow-up or repeat call. This means reduced repeat call rates and reduced call volume. Agents can reach out to other customers faster, reducing the hold time and call queues.
Improve your FCR by providing access to knowledge improvements and enhancing the quality of customer support through training programs.
Average Handle Time (AHT)
This metric tracks the time it takes for every customer interaction. This provides information on how efficiently a call center agent can provide support without sacrificing quality.
AHT relates to two main aspects–a customer’s satisfaction and a call center agent’s performance. An exceptional call center can satisfy both requirements to make sure that they’re giving you a great customer experience.
A good average call duration is 6 minutes and 3 seconds. But take note that this depends on the type of call center and how complex the customer support demands.
Improving call center AHT is possible by investing in additional tools and optimizing workflows.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
An NPS indicates the probability of customers recommending your product or service to other people and circles. This considers the service satisfaction and loyalty of a customer, as well as the brand image.
The call center benchmark for NPS in the industry is at 20%. Anything above 0 is good, anything below 0 is an indication for adjustment and improvement. To calculate this, subtract the percentage of detractors, or customers who give a score from 0-6 on the NPS scale, from promoters, or those who give a score from 9-10.
Call Abandonment Rate
The call abandonment measures the number of customers who hang up before their call is answered by an agent. A low call abandonment rate indicates customers are confident in your service and allows them to be more patient because of the benefit they will get from their interaction with you. Higher rates indicated inefficiency.
In a study by American Express, 34% or one-third of callers hang up and never call back if their call is not answered quickly. The average call center abandonment rate is 12-20%.
Improve this performance metric by providing more accurate wait times, optimizing call routing, and improving customer service channels.
Occupancy Rate
Occupancy rate is the percentage of time call center agents spend handling customers. This call center metric evaluates how much of a contact center agent’s total available time is spent on taking calls, chatting, or writing emails to clients.
Call center managers use important metrics to assess employee management strategy and tactics. This is also known as occupancy percentage or utilization.
When the occupancy rate is high, this indicates call center staff are maximizing their time to interact with customers. A low utilization shows inefficiency in the working process.
Occupancy may differ for every channel. For phone calls, evaluation is more focused on an agent’s interaction with the customer, excluding hold time. Live chats only include the time that a contact center agent is actively chatting with a client. For emails, activities such as reading, composing a reply, and writing are evaluated.
Call Arrival Rate
The call arrival rate is a metric that measures the number of calls that a call center receives within a certain unit of time.
This metric evaluates the staffing needs of a business. If many calls are put on hold and dropped, then there may be an insufficient number of agents. When there are too many agents for the call volume, this may lead to increased labor costs.
The target is to meet operational efficiency to support call center teams to handle customers well.
Use these top call center statistics and performance metrics to meet customer expectations.
Call center future trends are crucial to improve processes and help call center companies succeed in their respective fields. When plans and strategies are based and aligned on these stats and trends, it would be easier for companies to adapt to the ever-changing needs and demands of their target markets.
Enhancing productivity and continuously providing prompt and efficient support to clients is a proven way to maintain valuable relationships with clients and other stakeholders. Thus, call center companies should consider investing more in recruiting highly capable agents and consistently helping them acquire more skills through proper training. The rise of AI is also paving the way for call centers to deliver quicker responses and equally effective business solutions at a more affordable price. Technology, as usual, plays an integral part in any organization’s success.
Get updated with the latest industry statistics and trends and improve your call center performance with Digital Minds BPO.
If you want to create more valuable relationships with your clients, Digital Minds BPO has got you covered. We offer a wide range of call center solutions that will help you gain a competitive advantage in your business. We specialize in telemarketing, appointment setting, inbound call center service, virtual receptionist services, and more. Contact us today, and let’s start building your dreams!