It’s not surprising that first contact resolution (FCR) is becoming a high priority among forward-looking contact center managers. Increasing the percentage of contacts resolved during the initial contact provides three great benefits; customer satisfaction goes up, operating costs go down, and contact-center generated revenue goes up. There are also potential downsides, like extended handle time as agents strive to keep the caller on-line until the issue can be resolved.

In this paper we review the benefits of higher FCR rates, carefully examine the causes of repeat calls, and outline specific agent-centric remedies that contact center management can take to improve FCR and AHT at the same time.