What Is First Call Resolution? How to Improve FCR

58% of consumers would rather stand in line at the DMV than go through the frustration of contacting a live customer service agent. In the digital age, customers desire on-demand, 24/7 support, with slow service delivery resulting in dissatisfied customers.

First call resolution (FCR) is a straightforward call center metric that measures a support team’s ability to resolve inbound customer problems quickly. While simple, it indicates how efficient your support agents are at resolving tickets and the overall quality of customer service.

While FCR isn’t a comprehensive indicator of support quality, it can be combined with other call center and IT service metrics to empower you to identify problem areas and improve your support centers.

In this article, we’ll define first call resolution and explore its impact on overall customer satisfaction. We’ll also break down best practices for contact centers to keep their first call resolution time low.

First call resolution vs first contact resolution

First call resolution and first contact resolution are similar, with one distinct difference.

First call resolution refers to how quickly service teams can resolve issues during the first phone call, while first contact resolution includes all support channels such as live chat, email, social media, etc.

First contact resolution is more commonly used with modern support teams that take a multi-channel approach to resolving customer issues. It reflects all the ways people interact with businesses. That covers every touchpoint you have with customers. These are sometimes used interchangeably, with most customer support teams providing customers with multiple channels for resolving issues outside of phone calls.

Benefits of Improved First Contact Resolution

Improving first call resolution times leads to obvious downstream impacts, including

• Resolving issues that cause low first-call resolution times: Improving FCR showcases that your support team is actively identifying areas for improvement as service agents and correcting these issues.
• Improves overall customer experience: High FCR ensures customers receive timely, effective resolutions on their first call, improving their experience with your brand. This positive experience extends beyond support and influences their entire journey with your brand. Research suggests that for every 1% increase in first-contact resolution times, customer satisfaction decreases by 1%.
• Reduces support costs: Improving first contact resolution times minimizes the number of customer support interactions. It helps reduce costs associated with labor and escalations. Each additional interaction with a customer takes agent’s time and resources. Companies cut expenses by resolving issues on first contact. Paying attention to the customer service experience also pays off. Data from Forrester shows that investing in a customer-first operation can yield up to a 700% return on investment over 12 years.
• Drives customer loyalty and retention: Efficient problem-solving increases customer loyalty. It improves retention. 60% of consumers purchase from a brand solely based on the service they expect to receive. If you don’t meet their expectations, you may lose their business. Conversely, bad customer service isn’t just a hit to the bottom line. It can also impact your standing in the market. 73% of consumers will switch to a competitor after multiple bad experiences.
• Enhances agent efficiency: High FCR rates allow agents to handle more cases. When issues are resolved on the first contact, support teams can work more efficiently, improving productivity across all support operations.
• Downstream, positive impact on other customer satisfaction metrics: High FCR  affects related KPIs like customer effort score (CES) and net promoter score. These metrics are connected. Improving FCR often leads to improvements in these other critical customer service indicators.
• Allows businesses to grow and scale: A high FCR rate keeps the quality of customer service consistent as the business scales, without boosting headcount. Efficient first-contact resolutions allow businesses to scale customer volume without increasing support costs.

Challenges of FCR

The main challenge of call center FCR is identifying areas of improvement for initial support calls and then implementing solutions to fix those issues. Here are six FCR-related challenges facing contact centers and customer support teams.

1. Insufficient access to information for support agents

Service agents often need more contextual information to resolve support issues. This may be background information on a specific customer, previous knowledge of routine customer support issues, or overall product knowledge. A lack of scenario-based knowledge can lead to long resolution times and multiple calls to a contact center.

To resolve support issues at first contact, enable your service agents with the knowledge and support they need to overcome routine issues and problem-solve independently. This includes providing agents with a unified knowledge base that documents routine issues, well-documented SOPs on resolving or descaling different scenarios, and in-app guidance that walks support agents through workflows step-by-step.

With a digital adoption platform like Whatfix DAP, create in-app tutorials that guide support agents through different customer service scenarios and workflows to resolve service tickets and improve workflow governance quickly.

Quickly onboard new call center or customer service agents with Task Lists, allowing them to progress through a series of in-app tasks contextual to their role. Flows provide step-by-step guidance on infrequent scenarios or complex tasks. Smart Tips provide additional knowledge or nudge agents to take a specific action.

Integrate your knowledge base into your help desk workflows to provide service agents with an in-app resource center that pulls from your knowledge repositories, helping them find any SOP, user support, or any process-related document without leaving their help desk.

2. Multiple contact center communication channels

Customers may use different channels to communicate support issues, including email, live chat, social media, in-app support, or phone calls. Not only does that create silos, but it also makes it difficult for service teams to track the exact first touchpoint for customer interactions when they engage with multiple channels. This makes tracking FCR go from simple to complex when managing multiple support mediums.

Support leaders should identify all channels customers submit support issues from and integrate these channels into a single omnichannel communication management tool to track interactions more accurately across all channels. This allows agents to have a complete view of customer interactions, no matter their communication channel, integrating all data sources into one data lake that provides clear, comprehensive coverage on all customer support channels and customer service touchpoints.

3. Poor agent training

Poor first call resolution is often an indicator of poorly trained support agents. Support agents require various training programs to resolve issues on the first call. Service agent onboarding training includes help desk onboarding, customer service role-play scenario training, de-escalation training, support ticket routing training, product knowledge training, and more.

Take a continuous improvement approach to your customer service agent training. This includes:

• Provide continuous upskill training to equip your service agents to handle emerging support issues, use new support tools to decrease time-to-resolution, and educate your service team on new product features or talking points.
• Identifying the root causes of agents needing multiple calls to resolve a customer issue and proactively training your new and existing agents on these issues and scenarios.
• Collect post-training feedback from your service agents to identify gaps in your call center training program.
• Track end-user analytics to understand how your service agents progress through your help desk workflows to identify areas of user friction. Use this data to launch new in-app guidance that supports agents with contextual help in the flow of work, right where they experience issues.

With an application analytics platform like Whatfix Product Analytics, ITSM leaders can understand how service agents interact with your help desk application and its service ticket workflows. Track key service agent actions using a no-code tool to set up custom user events.

For example, map your service ticket resolution journeys by creating an event for each step of the process, and then analyze these journeys to identify where service agents are experiencing friction.

Use these insights to identify where you should create new in-app Smart Tips and Flows to provide service agents with just-in-time support to help them resolve customer support issues on the first call.

4. Complex issues and escalations

Specific customer support issues may be too complex for an entry-level support agent. Other support issues may always require multiple calls or emails to resolve.  Service team leaders must develop clear escalation protocols and support ticket priority levels to help individual agents identify these specific cases and know when to escalate.

This enables service agents to quickly route more complex issues to those more equipped to resolve them. This allows more complicated issues to be resolved by more experienced agents, and tier one agents to focus on inbound customer issues that are easy to resolve – helping to improve FCR times for both cohorts of customers through more defined support ticket queue processes.

5. Pressure to prioritize speed over quality

It’s important to remember that FCR is a metric, not a pure indicator of support quality or customer satisfaction. While it has a direct correlation, the drive to improve FCR rates might lead to incomplete resolutions and customers feeling rushed to a conclusion that didn’t solve their issue. Set call center performance goals emphasizing resolution quality and speed, allowing agents to focus on effective, comprehensive solutions, not just the quickest ones.

Best Practices for Improving First Call Resolution

We’ve presented key challenges facing support teams that result in lengthy first call resolution times and highlighted solutions to those challenges. To better highlight those solutions, here are best practices for IT help desk and customer service teams to track and improve FCR:

• Enable agents an internal knowledge base: Create and maintain an internal knowledge base for your internal support agents. It should include support-related methods of procedures and provide service agents with process documentation on how to resolve common help desk tickets.
• Provide customers with a knowledge base to resolve issues: Customers prefer self-service support over traditional channels like email and phone calls. A knowledge base can provide your customer-facing users with FAQs on overcoming common issues, and user guides for more complex technical support on things like set-up, new feature adoption, integrations, and more.
• Invest in a digital adoption platform (DAP): Software like a help desk or customer support management platform isn’t a magical solution to your support issues. Service agents must adopt the contextual processes and tasks you’ve designed in these tools and process governance must be followed to ensure high FCR times. With a DAP, enable service agents with in-app guidance to accelerate time-to-proficiency for new support reps, provide just-in-time support on complex support issues or infrequently encountered tasks, and maximize overall agent efficiency.
• Use AI and chatbots for basic inquiries: Chatbots can handle common questions and can be programmed to escalate complex issues to human agents when specific criteria are met. This reduces the load while allowing human agents to focus on more complex issues. Emerging genAI capabilities train chatbots on your service team’s procedures and processes, commonly encountered issues, and product knowledge, helping them become contextual assistants that deflect simple support issues and improve FCR.
• Continuously train your support agents: Poor FCR times are often a result of poor support agent training. Enable new agents with sandbox application environments that provide simulated, hands-on training experiences on your support procedures and tasks before agents interact with an actual customer. Offer continuous training as emerging issues arise and offer to pay for service agents to complete third-party certification programs. Empowered agents are more confident in their ability to resolve issues, are more likely to take ownership of customer problems, and result in a better customer experience.
• Integrate all support channels: According to Salesforce’s State of Connected Customer report, 69% of customers believe companies should expand their engagement methods. Integrate all customer touchpoints. A unified support platform helps agents address customer needs without asking them to repeat information. They can resolve issues faster and reduce the number of escalations.
• Record and analyze first call interactions: Review call recordings to identify recurring issues.  This data will help you identify gaps in your service agent training and improve your call center scripts. Call recordings will inform you about what’s working and what’s not. They can also be an excellent resource for training, allowing more experienced agents to listen to first call recordings of newer support reps and provide detailed feedback on how to improve.
• Focus on root cause analysis: Train agents to investigate customer issues and address root causes. Addressing the root causes may take more time to resolve the immediate ticket but will prevent future problems that stem from this issue. When trends are identified, contact center leaders can create new resources and procedures to help support reps overcome these issues. This allows company leaders to focus on resolving the issue from a product perspective.
• Analyze the full customer journey: Understand how many support calls start with unsuccessful self-service attempts. Use analytics to track and improve the effectiveness of self-help tools. This will highlight gaps in the customer support

How to Track First Contact Resolution

Tracking first call resolution may seem simple, but this becomes tedious for multi-channel support teams. Here are ways to help your call center team more accurately track FCR:

• Use automated tools to track FCR: Help desk systems and customer support software provide automated tracking features that monitor FCR rates in real-time. This way, managers can analyze calls, spot trends, and take action on service agent performance gaps. Automated tracking provides the data you need for an intelligent, data-driven approach to improving FCR.
• Set FCR benchmarks and compare to companies in your industry: Compare your FCR rates with industry standards to understand how your performance measures up and where improvement opportunities exist. For example, SQM Group’s 2023 research found the aggregated average across all industries for the FCR benchmark is 68%. Overall FCR for call centers ranges from 39% to 91%, with less complex industries like retail having better FCR rates and more technical industries like B2B SaaS or telecommunications having the lowest FCR rates.
• Track inbound first contract touchpoints across multiple channels: Track FCR across channels to drive consistent performance. You’ll want to look at more than just numbers. Do some digging to understand which channels are performing better than others.  For example, you might find that your FCR is high for email interactions but low on social media. You can use that information to find areas for improvement. Is there information that agents are missing when they respond to customers on social media?
• Create agent-specific FCR goals: Establish FCR goals tailored to individual agents. This will allow contact center and support leaders to recognize top performers and identify those who need additional support or training. Personalized goals also provide clear targets for employees.
• Track reopen rates for FCR accuracy: Sometimes, a closed customer service case doesn’t stay that way. High reopen rates can indicate gaps in FCR performance. Tracking reopens helps maintain the integrity of FCR measurements.
• Evaluate the impact of escalations on FCR: Analyze how often calls escalate. Then, consider whether escalations were necessary or preventable. Develop action plans to minimize unnecessary escalations. Ensure your employees know the plans and how to follow them. Understanding escalation patterns also reveals opportunities for improving FCR.

Support Resolution Clicks Better with Whatfix

Whatfix provides contact centers and application owners with a no-code platform to create in-app guidance and on-demand support that enable service agents, drive workflow adoption, and achieve business outcomes with frictionless technology experiences.

With Whatfix:

• Enable users with role-based in-app guided onboarding and training with Whatfix DAP. Task Lists and Product Tours accelerate time-to-proficiency for new call center agents. Flows provide contextual support on complex issues or infrequently done tasks.
• Provide on-demand user support with Whatfix Self Help, integrating your knowledge repositories (knowledge base, SOPs, escalation procedures, scenario training, company policies, etc.) into an in-app help center. Self Help contextually suggests relevant help content depending on the situation, and service agents can use a search bar to find any process or help content.
• Analyze in-app guidance consumption and identify common Self Help troubleshooting issues with Guidance Analytics to understand how service agents are engaging with your in-app content and to measure its impact on FCR and other call center metrics.
• Easily create sandbox environments of your help desk and call center workflows to provide new agents with simulated hands-on training with Whatfix Mirror, enabling them to gain experience with your actual processes and tasks before engaging with real customers.
• Collect end-user feedback at key moments like post-training or after engaging with Self Help with in-app Surveys to help you gain more qualitative insights into your service agent experiences.
• With Whatfix Product Analytics, analyze end-user behavior to identify friction areas in your call center and support agent workflows, identify inefficient processes, and make data-driven UX improvements to your procedures and tasks.

Ready to get started with Whatfix? Request a demo today!