Metrics for Telephone Calls

Here's a short overview of what I could find in terms of metrics used to measure telephone calls in organizations of the federal government. I based my findings on DPRs or Annual Reports. Only a surprisingly small number of organizations actually talk about the performance of their call centres.

Canada Revenue Agency:
Based on their 2005-06 Annual Report, caller accessibility measures the percentage of callers who succeed in reaching the telephone service, which basically means that the caller gets into the queue. Telephone service level is the percentage of calls answered within 2 minutes of entering the queue.

Service Canada:
Based on Service Canada Annual Report 2005-2006, Appendix 4 (Performance Scorecard) on page 37, it measures 3 things: the percentage of calls answered within 180 seconds (btw that’s 3 minutes guys… plain language writing…), percentage of Automated Telephone Information Service Usage (no reference to a page that explains how that works), % of calls blocked (EI High Volume Message) (which I take it means a busy signal).

Canada Business:
Based on their 2004-05 Annual Report, they seem to measure the volume of calls and do make a difference between automated and officer-assisted calls. They do have service standards, but they are very lax in terms of metrics, for example, their telephone service standard is: “Telephone service is available free of charge, generally from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday to Friday (except on holidays as they apply in each province). For exact service times, contact the centre in your province or territory. TTY is available for the hearing-impaired.”


Here are the links to the reports I used:

CRA Annual Report to Parliament 2005-06: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/agency/annual/2005-2006/performance-e/ar_2005-06_htmlTOC-e.html

Service Canada Annual Report 2005-2006:
http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/en/about/reports/ar_0506/pdf/ar_0506.pdf

Canada Business Annual Report 2004-05:
http://www.canadabusiness.ca/gol/cbec/site.nsf/vDownload/annual_reports/$file/canada_business_2004-2005_annual_report_en.pdf


Now for added fun, take a look at how dropped calls on automated lines are integrated in the measures. It would seem that most of the time, a call dropped on an automated line is considered as answered, the assumption being that the caller got the information he was looking for while going through the menus, or listening to the messages played while on hold.

Cognos Performance 2007

I had the opportunity to go to Cognos Performance 2007. It's basically a one day event centered around their products: new ones, what they do, how to use them, how they are used by different organizations, there's also the odd performance measurement/management related presentation.

I've been going for a few years now, I started because I was a user of their products, I'm not sure whether it was Impromptu or ReportNet at the time. I keep going both to keep in touch and know what's coming down the line.

I wouldn't recommend it for someone who never used Cognos products and who never plans to, but if you're a user, or customer, you might be interested. It's free, so the only cost is your time and transportation. I'm suprised that we don't see many students at this event.

you can access the day's agenda here: http://www.cognos.com/performance2007/na_agenda.html#on_ott

I went to Best Practices in Framework Manager, Keys to Successful Migrations from Cognos Series 7 to Cognos 8 BI and Complete Reporting and Analysis Coverage with Cognos 8 BI.

Those choices might seem strange to you, but remember that I've been using Cognos products for a few years now. If I had to choose again, I would've taken the IBM presentation over the migration session. I thought was hoping the migration would talk more about the new features in Cognos 8 (how to leverage them), but it was actually about the actual migration process itself.

Overall, I don't regret going.

Increase in the Number of Canadian Households with Internet Access

I was wrong: the number of households with Internet access is growing, but at an increasing speed.

According to the CRTC's Broadcasting Policy Monitoring Report, there 56% of canadian households had Internet access in 2003, 59% in 2004, 64% in 2005 and 70% in 2006. That's an increase of 3 percentage points between 2003 and 2004, 5 percentage points between 2004 and 2005 and 6 percentage points between 2005 and 2006.