10 Examples of
SMART Goals
for Call Center
Agents
EBOOK
Imagine being a passenger airplane pilot whose entire job is to get a plane full of people
to a specic destination on a specic day at a specic time. Everyone who bought a ticket
for a certain ight made the selection based on the destination, date, and time with the
understanding that’s what would be delivered.
Now imagine that the pilot only had a general idea of what area they were supposed to land
in, but not a specic airport or even city. On top of that, what if they weren’t quite clear on
what day the plane was supposed to land, much less what time it was expected to arrive?
Technically there’s a chance that the pilot could make a lucky guess about where to go, when
to go, and what time to get there, but chances are incredibly unlikely. The probability is that
the pilot could get in the general area, but hours away from the expected destination of the
plane full of passengers at a time that completely throws a wrench in everyone’s plans.
Without a specic destination and a specic time and date to arrive there, even the most
skilled of pilots are unlikely to perform the job that they were hired and paid to perform.
A call center is no different. Similarly, if you’re not clear on the specics of the customer
service goals that you’re setting and asking your customer service teams to get on board
with — even if you have Top Gun level customer service agents — there’s a very small chance
you’ll arrive where you want to go.
Luckily, there is a framework for setting
customer service goals that will help you
and your call center staff arrive much closer,
if not at, your destination. It’s called
SMART goal setting.
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WHAT IS A SMART GOAL?
Before sharing examples of SMART
goals for call center agents, let’s break
down what a SMART goal is and why it’s
important for customer service goals.
SMART goal setting is a system to help
individuals in your customer service
teams and organizations set goals in a
way that greatly enhances the chances of
achieving those goals. All SMART goals
should be created to support the mission,
vision, values, and goals of the call center.
This means that all examples of SMART
goals for call center agents are going
to look different in different call centers
and will probably look different in your
call center from quarter to quarter, if not
month to month.
What is a SMART Goal?
SMART is an acronym that stands for:
S: Specic
M: Measurable
A: Attainable, Achievable, As If
R: Relevant
T: Timely
2.
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Specic
Every one of your examples of SMART
goals for call center agents that you
implement needs to be specic to
the customer service team and the
management. It should be absolutely
clear on what customer service goals
they’re all working toward. For example,
if you request that your customer service
agents reduce customer wait times, they
could cut down on customer wait times
by two seconds, and technically they
would have fullled your request. If you
set customer service goals to cut down
on customer wait times by three minutes,
your team will know exactly what they’re
working toward, and you’ll have the
satisfaction of watching the needle move
toward a goal that could potentially make
a large impact on overall call center
performance.
What is a SMART Goal?
Measurable
Attaching a quantiable quality to
examples of SMART goals for call center
agents is crucial for achieving customer
service goals. The example from the
“Specic” section applies here as well.
Asking your agents to cut down on wait
time can technically be achieved simply
by cutting down by one second. Avoid the
awkwardness of having the “that’s not
what I meant” conversation by knowing
what measurable outcomes you’re looking
for. This is why call center software that
can measure customer service metrics is
crucial to success.
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Attainable, Achievable, As If
You always want to set up your customer
service team for success whenever
possible. So, as you read these examples
of SMART goals for call center agents,
think about how attainable your customer
service goals are — which is crucial for
creating wins for your team. For example,
you could ask your team to reduce
customer wait times down to one minute.
However, it’s up to you to evaluate how
realistic that is, given the volume of calls
and how long wait times are currently.
Your team needs to be empowered
to succeed, and as nice as it sounds
to have a one-minute wait time as the
standard, expecting the unrealistic will
only frustrate your team, which increases
the risk of lowered morale and higher
turnover.
The “as if” aspect is borrowed from
Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), a
linguistic-based practice often used to
help clients maximize their performance
in their personal and professional lives.
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What is a SMART Goal?
Even though it’s not as widely used in
creating examples of SMART goals for call
center agents, it’s worth incorporating to
make your goals more attainable. Acting
“as if” simply means the agent pretends,
imagines, and behaves “as if” they already
live in a world where customer wait times
are only three minutes long. If you’re
receiving feedback that even imagining
your customer service goals is difcult
for your team, you might want to readjust
your goal until they can fully visualize
and embody the change you want your
customer service team to make.
What is a SMART Goal?
Relevant
When setting customer service goals,
consider whether the goal is relevant to
the mission, vision, values, and goals of
the call center. Is it relevant to the skill
sets that your agents bring to the table?
Does it make sense in the context of the
larger picture of what your call center is
trying to achieve? If you have difculty
identifying where in the grander narrative
of your company that your customer
service goals belong to, you might
want to take a step back and ask if it’s
a goal that is worth your time, money,
energy, and lost opportunities to try to
implement. Be sure to keep relevance in
mind while reading through our examples
of SMART goals for call center agents.
Timely or Timebound
There’s truly nothing like a deadline to
motivate your team toward a goal, which
is why all of our examples of SMART
goals for call center agents can have a
deadline created around them. Any goal
that you set should have a clear deadline
and should be marked on all company
calendars. Any negotiations on moving
the deadline should be met with careful
consideration, as you do not want to set
a precedent that deprioritizing goals and
commitments are an acceptable practice
in your call center.
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10 Examples of Smart Goals
For Call Center Agents
10 EXAMPLES OF SMART GOALS FOR CALL CENTER AGENTS
Taking the time to ensure your goals meet the SMART criteria will have a huge
return on investment, especially as you start understanding more of what works
and what doesn’t work for your call center in this framework.
Here are ten examples of SMART goals for call center agents that will increase your
call center’s performance:
1. Increase Customer Advocacy
Referrals and positive reviews are some
of the most lucrative and cost-effective
sources of gaining new customers.
To implement this as a call center
SMART goal, you’ll rst have to integrate
Net Promoter Scores (NPS) surveys
throughout the customer experience.
Additionally, surveying new and current
customers will give you valuable insights
about what is working and what needs
to be improved, while a higher NPS score
indicates a higher likelihood of your
customers’ satisfaction.
2. Achieve Higher Employee Satisfaction
The more satised your employees, the
better served your customers are — which
makes this one of the most important
examples of SMART goals for call center
agents. This metric is closely linked to
AHT, so it’s one to pay attention to. You
can measure employee satisfaction
through employee surveys, AHT data,
and turnover rates.
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10 Examples of Smart Goals
For Call Center Agents
3. Reduce Customer Wait Times
With all the metrics that you are tracking
and all the SMART goals you are creating
around your customers, this one might be
worthy of being put right at the top of your
priority list. The longer your customers
wait to speak to someone about their
customer issues, the more frustrated
they’re going to get — which is why so
many examples of SMART goals for call
center agents focus on efciency and
satisfaction for the customer. If they don’t
have to wait long, then there’s a higher
likelihood of them feeling like they were
well taken care of and becoming one of
your advocates with positive customer
feedback as happy customers. Looking for
ways to reduce your customer wait time
to improve customer retention? Discover
what integrations and solutions our
QA software offers that can help you
achieve your wait time SMART goal.
4. Continuously Improve Employee Skills
Before hiring and onboarding, customer
service managers want to know if a
prospective agent has basic skills and
understandings. At the very least, these
things should indicate that they’re capable
of being a valuable asset to your call
center team and contributing toward the
right customer service goals. As they’re
being onboarded and trained, you’ll want to
ensure that their skill set equips them for
success as they go out onto the oor and
start handling customer concerns. With
training built into your QA software, you’ll
know the strengths of individuals and your
team as a whole, in addition to areas where
there’s room for improvement or clarity in
your training process.
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5. Increase Employee
Problem-solving Skills
Once you’ve hired a skilled call center
agent, how do you elevate their
performance to the next level? A team of
top-performing customer service agents
adept at solving customer problems
is advantageous — they won’t have to
rely on colleagues or management to
answer questions, and AHT will decrease
signicantly. However, there’s a less
obvious benet to your employees
increasing their problem-solving skills:
it means that they’re growing and
engaging while increasing condence and
connection in their work environment. By
offering continued training and mentorship
opportunities to your agents, the ones
who want to grow and strive for excellence
will likely step up to the plate. This SMART
goal can be measured by turnover,
AHT, monitoring who has completed
which training on your QA software, and
employee satisfaction surveys.
6. Improve Turnaround Times
It’s not surprising that more than one of
our examples of SMART goals for call
center agents is tied to AHT. Leaving
customers on a prolonged hold while
getting their questions answered is
never a recipe for success — especially
when your call center agent is returning
to the call with information that the
customer did not want to hear. This is an
opportunity for the team’s focus to shift
toward what communication channels are
being utilized to resolve customer issues
and if there’s a chance to implement more
communication methods that can deliver
faster results, such as chat. Finding QA
software with robust integration abilities
is key in opening up new channels of
communication and reaching your
customer service goals.
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10 Examples of Smart Goals
For Call Center Agents
10 Examples of Smart Goals
For Call Center Agents
7. Increase Customer Satisfaction
A no-brainer for any call center that
wants to achieve its customer service
goals — one of the most obvious
examples of SMART goals for call
center agents — is increasing customer
satisfaction. It has a myriad of benets,
including increased customer advocacy
and return customers. Average Review
Ratings will be the KPI that shows you
whether you and your team are moving
the needle in the right direction or need
to design a new strategy.
8. Increase Customer Loyalty
This is an important item in our
examples of SMART goals for call
center agents that ties in very closely
with customer satisfaction and
increased customer advocacy. Loyal
customers say good things about your
company and tend to be some of your
most effective advertising making this
a worthy goal to pursue. Want to know
if your customer loyalty is increasing?
Take a look at your Customer
Retention Rate and your Customer
Churn to see if you’re meeting or
exceeding customer expectations.
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10 Examples of Smart Goals
For Call Center Agents
9. Improve Assessing and Measuring
Your Company’s Data
If you’ve been taking the same approach
to assessing your data for more than a
few years, there’s a high likelihood that
you’re using methods and technology that
is slowing you down, or even worse, not
painting the entire picture of how your
call center is improving. Revisiting your
values, mission, and goals will help you
reorient yourself and your team to what is
important to pay attention to, especially
when considering which examples of
SMART goals for call center agents you’d
like to implement. This is also a good time
to audit your analytics or QA software to
ensure that you are getting the data you
need in an efcient manner and without a
bunch of fuss.
10. Create a More Human Experience
for Your Customers
Last on our list of examples of SMART
goals for call center agents is a goal that’s
not quite as cut and dry to calculate.
Your customers love the convenience
of technology but, like many people, are
craving a real connection during their
day-to-day lives, especially after so many
aspects of our lives have gone online.
Creating a more personalized experience
for your customers might not meet the “M”
part of SMART very easily with a concise
data point, but there are communication
channels that could certainly increase
the likelihood of customers feeling like
they received a personalized experience,
such as video chat. Other ways to provide
that personalized experience is through
designing a seamless user experience from
end to end when they come to your website
or splash page. Pay attention to feedback
around these strategies in your customer
service satisfaction surveys. (Bonus:
providing your agents with a personalized
human experience will pay dividends in
illustrating the value of this strategy.)
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Conclusion
Taking the time to understand these examples of SMART goals
for call center agents is an investment in itself. To achieve all of
this, you want QA software that can deliver the KPI data in a way
that leaves no second-guessing for whether you arrived at your
destination or — if it’s time to recalibrate. Set up a demo with
MaestroQA today and start a journey with top-notch data navigation
to get your call center to the Top Gun performance level.
MaestroQA makes omnichannel quality assurance software for modern
support teams. Etsy, Mailchimp, Peloton, Zendesk, and more use MaestroQA
to improve agent performance, optimize CX processes, unlock business-level
insights, and enable amazing customer experiences — all while improving the
metrics that matter like retention,
revenue, and CSAT.
www.maestroqa.com
