How to Monitor Call Center Performance: The KPIs You Should Be Tracking

Answering calls quickly isn’t enough anymore. Today’s call center performance is measured by how well efficiency, service quality, and customer experience work together.

And when one of those breaks down, the entire operation feels it. An agent might answer every call in record time, but if customers keep calling back with the same unresolved issue, speed becomes meaningless.

This is why every call center needs KPI-driven performance monitoring. Instead of relying on scattered reports or gut instinct, a structured approach to tracking the right metrics gives support teams a clear picture of what’s really happening on the floor. It helps identify recurring issues, coach agents more effectively, plan staffing with confidence, and, most importantly, deliver a better customer experience. Research from McKinsey shows that organizations using tools like speech analytics to monitor call quality can increase customer satisfaction by up to 10% while cutting operational costs by as much as 30%.

When you track what matters, performance stops being a guessing game and starts driving real results. And the article below will discuss exactly which metrics you should track to make sure your in-house or outsource call center services actually bring your business closer to success.

Laying Out the Foundation for Call Center Performance Monitoring

Modern-day dashboards and analytics platforms indeed allow anyone to track most KPIs without diving too deep into technicalities. However, even when most of the work is done for you, it’s still important to have a solid foundation.

1. Start by defining what success actually looks like for your operation.

Are you optimizing for retention? Revenue growth? Cost per resolution? Your business goals should dictate which KPIs matter most, and not vice versa.

2. Next, establish clear SLA baselines.

Document your service level targets. For instance, these can be the usual industry-standard like 80/20 – answering 80% of calls within 20 seconds. You can also include acceptable wait times and resolution benchmarks. Write these down and make them accessible to everyone. Research shows that across industries, the average First Contact Resolution rate sits between 70% and 79%%, with only 5% of call centers achieving world-class performance at 80% or above. Knowing where you stand against these benchmarks gives you a clearer understanding of where to start your improvement.

Build a Monitoring Cadence and Governance

Not everyone in your organization needs the same data or needs to see it at the same time. Call center metrics are most useful when they’re tailored to the people working with them and delivered at the right cadence.

Operations managers, for example, should keep an eye on real-time dashboards throughout the day, adjusting staffing as queues grow or shrink. Team leads, on the other hand, benefit more from daily scorecards that highlight agent performance, schedule adherence, and quality results. Weekly reviews are ideal for spotting further coaching needs, training gaps, or process bottlenecks. Then, at the monthly level, leadership should step back and focus on bigger-picture trends, strategic initiatives, and long-term improvement efforts.

Clarifying who is responsible for what is just as important as setting proper timing:

• Operations managers → primarily accountable for service levels and capacity planning.
• Team leads → focus on coaching agents and maintaining adherence.
• QA analysts → review quality scores and compliance risks.
• Executives → care most about CSAT, cost-to-serve, and how the call center influences retention and revenue.

When everyone knows which metrics they own, performance tracking becomes focused and effective.

Choose the Right Data Sources and Tools

Your monitoring system is only as good as the data feeding into it. Most call centers pull from multiple sources:

• The telephony platform that tracks call volumes and wait times;
• CRM system that logs resolution data and customer history;
• QA tools, capturing compliance and script adherence;
• Post-call surveys measuring satisfaction;
• And workforce management platforms that handle scheduling and adherence.

The challenge in performance management for a call center is putting all the different pieces of information together. And unified dashboards that pull from every system give you precisely that. Just as importantly, make sure everyone’s using consistent definitions. If your telephony platform calculates Average Handle Time differently from your workforce management tool, you’ll spend more time reconciling numbers than acting on insights.

Call Center Agent Performance Metrics You Should Track

Tracking the right metrics separates high-performing call centers from those constantly fighting fires. The metrics that follow aren’t just numbers to report upward – they’re tools for diagnosis, improvement, and strategic decision-making.

1. Customer Experience KPIs

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is to this day the most direct measure of how customers feel about their interaction. Typically measured through a post-call survey asking customers to rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10, CSAT tells you whether you’re meeting expectations. High CSAT scores correlate strongly with loyalty and repeat business. If your scores dip, you know something needs attention – whether it’s agent training, process changes, or product issues causing frustration.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) gives you a biit of a broader view than CSAT. While CSAT focuses on the transaction (“How was this call?”), NPS basically tells about the relationship (“Would you recommend us to a friend?”). This makes NPS valuable for spotting systemic issues. A single bad call might temporarily lower CSAT, but consistently low NPS signals deeper problems with your product, service, or overall customer experience. As such, use NPS feedback to prioritize structural improvements within your business operations.

Customer Effort Score (CES) and related effort indicators measure how hard customers have to work to get their problem solved:

• Did they have to call multiple times?
• Get transferred repeatedly?
• Switch from chat to phone to email?

High-effort experiences drive churn. Reducing effort directly correlates with better First Contact Resolution, lower repeat contact rates, and improved digital containment. Because when you make things easier for customers, they stick around.

2. Efficiency and Service Level KPIs

Average Handle Time (AHT) combines talk time, hold time, and after-call work into one metric. It’s tempting to drive AHT down aggressively, but that’s a mistake. The industry benchmarks for AHT vary significantly by industry and can be anywhere between 3 and 15 minutes. For easier customer service, the average as of now is currently considered to be 6 minutes. Context matters still. More importantly, AHT must be balanced against quality and FCR. An agent rushing through a call to hit a low AHT target often creates repeat contacts that cost more in the long run.

Service Level and Speed of Answer define how quickly customers reach an agent. As we have previously noted, the classic benchmark is 80/20, though some centers have previously tried to target 90% within 15 seconds. Service level impacts abandonment rates, perceived responsiveness, and staffing models. If you consistently miss your service level target, customers wait too long, abandon their purchases, and satisfaction tanks. Yet overstaffing to hit aggressive service levels is also not an answer, as it more often than not only leads to increased support costs.

Call Abandonment Rate and Queue Metrics reveal how many callers hang up before reaching an agent. Abandonment happens when wait times stretch too long or when IVR systems frustrate customers. Note, though, that you should track abandonment alongside your queue metrics to understand whether the issue is capacity (not enough agents), routing (calls going to the wrong place), or IVR design (customers bailing out before they reach a queue). The good call abandonment rate for a call center is 5% or lower, though 5%-10% is considered average.

3. First Contact Resolution and Quality KPIs

First Contact Resolution (FCR) measures whether customers get their issue resolved on the first try. You can track FCR through:

• CRM dispositions
• follow-up flags
• or survey questions asking “Did we solve your problem completely?”

The higher the FCR, the better the customer experience. It also leads to reduced volume of repeat contacts which lowers operational costs. It’s arguably the single most important metric for balancing efficiency and quality.

Quality Assurance (QA) Scores usually come from scorecards evaluating calls against criteria like:

• proper greeting
• identity verification
• accurate diagnosis
• clear solution
• Empathy\
• and compliance with scripts or regulations.

Call center quality assurance shows whether agents are following best practices and representing your brand well. Regular call monitoring and calibration sessions help keep scoring consistent and fair. So, it’s important to use QA data to identify coaching opportunities, both individual and team-wide.

In regulated industries such as healthcare, finance, and insurance, Compliance and Accuracy metrics become especially critical too. Tracking error rates (like providing incorrect information to customers) helps surface gaps that can quickly escalate into bigger problems. Rework rates show how often issues must be corrected, signaling inefficiencies and training needs. Critical compliance failures highlight violations that can expose the organization to serious risk.

Even a small number of compliance breaches can lead to audits, fines, or legal action. That’s why compliance shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought or a box to check. It needs to be a non-negotiable part of your quality program, reinforced through consistent coaching and accountability.

Other Things to Consider: Agent Performance and Workforce KPIs

Knowing what is working for your customers and how operations flow is good, but not enough. Agent-level metrics have to be tracked too, as they help you understand workload balance and identify potential burnout before it becomes turnover. So here is the data you should definitely track to avoid that.

1. Occupancy rate → measures the percentage of logged-in time agents spend on calls and call-related work.

The optimal range is 75% to 85%, according to workforce management experts. With rates below 75%, you might be overstaffed or have inefficient processes. When they are above 85% to 90%, it means your agents face back-to-back calls, which leads straight to burnout.

2. Schedule Adherence → tracks whether agents are where they’re supposed to be, when they’re supposed to be there.

A healthy benchmark is 85% to 95%. If adherence drops below 85%, service levels suffer because agents aren’t available when scheduled. If it’s consistently above 95%, your schedule might be too rigid, leaving no flexibility for necessary off-phone activities or even basic human needs.

3. Agent productivity → includes calls handled, issues resolved per hour, QA scores, and how effectively agents use knowledge articles or self-service tools.

These “hard” metrics give a clear picture of performance, but they don’t tell the whole story. Soft KPIs are also important, such as the frequency of coaching sessions, employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), or engagement survey results. With call center turnover rates ranging from 30% to 45%, some of the highest across any industry, understanding what drives agent engagement is key. Tracking these softer metrics helps you not only measure productivity but also retain your best talent and maintain a motivated, high-performing team.

Recommended Call Center Performance Management Software for Better KPIs Tracking

We are not going to lie – tracking these many metrics can be quite confusing. That’s, of course, unless you have the right software. And below, you will find our list of five solutions that proved to excel at call center performance monitoring:

1. AmplifAI

AmplifAI stands out as a performance optimization engine with over 150 integrations across CRM, CCaaS, QA, and WFM systems. This allows the platform to centralize data into a unified hub, making KPI-tracking as easy as it can get. One of its standout features is its AI-driven coaching recommendations, which turn performance trends into tangible improvements. AmplifAI also provides role-based dashboards that give agents, managers, QA leads, and executives personalized views, which we noted as an important factor in organizing a proper performance monitoring.

2. NICE CXone

NICE offers a comprehensive AI-powered customer experience platform designed to orchestrate both human and AI agents. Their CXone Mpower platform helps organizations automate service, improve workflows, and deliver intelligent experiences at scale. With capabilities like omnichannel routing, workflow orchestration, AI-driven quality management, and workforce optimization, NICE empowers supervisors and agents to work smarte. The service offers quite a few features such as Copilot for Agents and Supervisors, automated interaction recording, and advanced analytics, which provide real-time insights to improve performance, engagement, and customer satisfaction.

3. Calabrio ONE

This service is an AI‑driven, unified performance management call center platform for contact centers that brings together workforce optimization, quality monitoring, analytics, and engagement tools in a single suite. It features help organizations forecast demand, schedule the right staff, evaluate and coach agent performance, and analyze customer interactions with advanced sentiment and automation.  Calabrio ONE connects workforce, quality, and performance data, giving supervisors and agents clear insights into their day‑to‑day operations.

4. Genesys Cloud EX

Genesys offers end-to-end customer experience management with integrated workforce engagement tools. It goes beyond core routing and analytics by offering an integrated suite of capabilities that help organizations forecast and schedule staffing using AI, monitor quality and compliance, assess performance with automated scorecards, and uncover conversational insights with speech and text analytics. Additionally, it allows managers to take advantage of real-time and historical dashboards to make proactive decisions, personalize coaching and training, and keep teams motivated with gamification features like leaderboards and KPIs that support employee development.

5. Zendesk WFM

Zendesk’s Workforce Management brings AI-powered forecasting, automated scheduling, real-time adherence tracking, and performance reporting directly into the Zendesk support experience. Its main focus is to help teams predict staffing needs, build optimized agent schedules, and monitor how work gets done. It uses historical data and machine learning to anticipate demand, generate efficient schedules that respect agent availability and skills, and provide managers with both real-time and historical insights into activity and productivity, all within the broader Zendesk support ecosystem.

Brief Comparison of Popular Tools

Putting It All Together: KPI Dashboards and Action Loops

KPIs only matter if they lead to better decisions. Staring at charts won’t improve performance, but acting on what the data tells you will. That’s why effective call centers pair clear, role-based dashboards with simple action loops that turn insights into results.

As such, start by tailoring dashboards to each audience:

1. Executives need a high-level view with a small set of “north star” metrics, such as CSAT, cost per contact, first-call resolution, service level, and agent turnover.

2. Operations managers need more detail, including real-time queue performance, team-level adherence, quality scores, and productivity trends.

3. Team leads benefit from agent-level scorecards that highlight individual performance, coaching needs, and schedule compliance.

4. Agents themselves should have access to personal dashboards that show their own results, learning progress, and recognition, so performance management feels transparent and motivating, not punitive.

Next, keep every dashboard focused. Limiting each one to 5–10 key metrics helps prevent information overload and allows one to notice the data that stands out. Remember, prioritize metrics that prompt a decision or action, not just those that explain what already happened.

Finally, build a consistent improvement loop around your data. Here’s how it looks:

Measure your current performance → analyze patterns → take action → review the impact → refine your approach → start over

For example: If call abandonment spikes every Tuesday at 2 p.m., investigate the cause. It could be a recurring system update, a staffing mismatch, or a predictable surge in demand. Once you identify the driver, adjust schedules, shift workloads, or prepare agents with better scripts. Then review the results and fine-tune for the next cycle.

Such a closed-loop approach turns KPI dashboards from passive reports into tools that actually drive your business forward.

Conclusion

Now, what did we learn? Mainly, effective call center performance monitoring is all about focus, alignment, and follow-through. As well as that, the most successful teams track a clear set of KPIs tied to business goals, review them at the right frequency, and assign ownership, so insights lead to action. As your approach matures, you can expand and refine what you measure, but the progress mainly comes from consistency, not complexity. If you use the right tools to measure the right metrics, performance monitoring can turn into a driver of continuous improvement rather than just another business report.

Share this: on Twitter on Facebook on LinkedIn