What Are Call Center Interval Reports?

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Call center interval reports are small “snapshots” of performance data measuring call center activity for any given period. Since call centers measure numerous metrics every single day, they use this data to create daily, weekly and monthly averages that provide insight into how the call center is performing.

Call center interval reports break this data down into much smaller chunks divided throughout the day. You can set up these reports to measure specific metrics (average speed of answer being one of the most common) or they can be more general-purpose, showing all call center metrics measured in real-time during any given interval.

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Why are call center interval reports helpful?

If you’re looking at your whole day average for any call center metric, your numbers might look fine. But what happened in the middle of the day?

Call center interval reports provide insight into these information “gaps” that are not visible when measuring larger time periods. They highlight intervals where things might not have been going as smoothly as they looked when you were only calculating the daily average.

For example, if you’re measuring a metric like average speed of answer, your whole day average on a particular day might be 21 seconds. What this doesn’t tell you, is that there was a period during lunchtime where this metric shot up to 4 minutes.

Understand problems to address them!

If you are not aware that you have a problem, how will you be able to fix it? When your call center interval reports draw attention to these issues, you can start to investigate what caused things to suddenly go downhill.  

Interval reports allow call center managers to understand their call centers better. By measuring metrics as intervals instead of whole day averages, it helps with some of the following:

  • Creating optimal staff schedules and shifts (Workforce management)
  • Evaluating your call center’s busiest time periods
  • Forecasting call volumes more accurately
  • Organizing break times appropriately
  • Deciding hiring numbers

How long should your intervals be?

The length of your intervals depends on a few factors. Call centers vary greatly in size, number of agents, and amount of call center activity. There is no perfect interval for every individual call center. Generally speaking, call center interval reports are usually either 15 minutes, 30 minutes or 60 minutes long.

If you have a larger call center with many agents, it makes sense to measure shorter intervals like 15 minutes. Smaller call centers can measure longer intervals.

It also depends on your average handling time. If your AHT is around 20 minutes, then a 15-minute interval report wouldn’t give you much useful information. Whatever interval you decide works best for your call center, measure it consistently to ensure the data is accurate.   

What metrics should you measure during intervals?

It is best practice to measure call center interval reports for a few key call center metrics. Interval reports will usually evaluate the following:

Measuring intervals keeps your call center on track

It’s easy to get lost in all the data generated by your call center. As a call center manager, you might have over 20 KPIs that you have to keep your eye on at all times.

By breaking things down into call center interval reports, you can make sure nothing is missed. As a result, problems can be addressed early on before they snowball into bigger issues.

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