Contact Center Reporting: Key Metrics & Best Practices

Contact center reporting aggregates rich data to help businesses improve their customer service and business reputations. Using metrics like agent performance, customer satisfaction, call volume, and more, managers can make smarter choices to overall improve contact center operations.

Contact centers are omnichannel solutions, allowing customers to engage with agents across voice calling, SMS, live chat, social media, email, and more. Historical and real-time contact center KPIs like Average Handle Time, First Call Resolution, and Customer Satisfaction Scores provide actionable insights into agent performance and the customer journey.

Advanced analytics tools provide detailed interactive reports that improve your business reputation and optimize the customer experience.

• Overview
• Reporting vs Analytics
• Types Reports
• Benefits
• Key Metrics
• Best Tools
• Best Practices

What Is Contact Center Reporting?

Contact center reporting is the process of collecting and analyzing live and historical data from omnichannel customer interactions and agent activity to identify key trends and areas for improvement. Template-based or customizable reports analyze raw data from across your contact center and create user-friendly reports with deep insights that help you meet key performance indicator (KPI) targets.

Contact center reporting takes many forms, including visual dashboards, wallboards, graphs, team activity reports, and real-time Service Level Agreement (SLA) alerts. Data sources include your voice and digital communication channels, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, workforce management solutions, integrated third-party platforms, and unified communications or team collaboration tools.

Standard and AI-powered contact center analytics help contact center managers understand how to optimize agent schedules, boost agent productivity, better prepare for peak call times, and streamline the customer experience.

Common Contact Center KPIs include:

• First Call Resolution
• Agent Occupancy
• Total Call Volume
• Average Handle Time
• Net Promoter Score
• Average Speed of Answer
• Escalation Rate

Contact Center Reporting vs Analytics

The difference between contact center reporting and analytics lies in their purpose, reporting is focused on “what” happened performance-wise while analytics touch on “why” patterns and trends emerge. Contact center reporting and contact center analytics are different tools that serve distinctive and critical roles in optimizing your contact center performance.

Contact center reporting collects data on contact center KPIs (call volume, first call resolution, etc.) to create charts and tables that assess contact center and agent activity. These reports help you monitor changes in standard metrics, like call volume, talk time, agent status, and call transfer rate, over days or weeks.

Contact center analytics focuses on uncovering trends and patterns within your operations to help forecast future outcomes and help you make the best strategic choices moving forward. It is a more dynamic point of view. Analytics draws from context-heavy and unstructured data like customer sentiment, customer conversation history, predictive modeling, and customer journey monitoring.

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a large role in analytics, assisting with sentiment analysis, forecasting common issues using predictive analytics, and leveraging NLP (natural language processing) to find trends and keywords in customer conversations.

Types of Contact Center Reports

Contact center reports come in different forms, each focusing on the unique elements impacting contact center operations and the customer experience.

Below are four of the most common types of contact center reports:

Agent Performance Reports

Agent performance reports provide insights into how well individual agents and teams meet company standards and service level agreements (SLAs). These reports help supervisors evaluate key performance metrics and identify areas for improvement.

• Key performance metrics – Track schedule adherence, transfer rates, first call resolution (FCR), average wait time, and average handle time (AHT) for agent efficiency.
• Custom and template-based agent scoresheets – Evaluate agent performance using customizable reports, pinpointing strengths and improvement areas.
• Speech and text analytics – Analyze call recordings and transcripts to identify common customer issues, improve scripts, and enhance training.
• Agent presence monitoring – Monitor agent activity, including time spent on calls, in meetings, idle, or away, to prevent burnout and reduce attrition.

Call Volume Reports

Call volume reports track the total number of inbound and outbound calls over specific time periods, helping managers understand call trends and allocate resources effectively.

• Peak call time analysis – Identify high-traffic periods to optimize staffing and minimize wait times.
• Inbound vs. outbound call ratio – Evaluate the balance between incoming and outgoing interactions to assess operational efficiency.
• Missed call ratio – Measure missed or abandoned calls to improve response times and reduce customer frustration.
• Multi-channel interaction tracking – Analyze call volumes across voice, chat, email, and social channels to determine customer preferences.

Customer Satisfaction Reports

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) reports assess how customers perceive their service experience, helping businesses improve customer retention and loyalty.

• CSAT score monitoring – Measure customer satisfaction based on post-interaction surveys, rating experiences on a scale of 1-10.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – Track customer willingness to recommend your business to others, identifying brand advocates and detractors.
• Customer Effort Score (CES) – Evaluate how easy or difficult it is for customers to interact with your company and use your services.
• Churn prediction analytics – Use customer sentiment and survey data to anticipate churn risks and implement retention strategies.

Call Center Performance Reports

73% of customers believe that if a brand values their time that’s a sign of good customer service.[*] Call center performance reports provide a high-level view of efficiency, resource allocation, and service quality, helping managers identify workflow bottlenecks and improve call handling.

• Key operational metrics – Track average call duration, call abandonment rates, cost per call, and service level monitoring.
• Call handling efficiency – Identify patterns in call transfers, escalations, and resolution times to streamline workflows.
• Customer experience insights – Analyze hold times and queue lengths to minimize wait times and enhance service delivery.
• Resource allocation reports – Optimize workforce distribution based on real-time and historical call data.

Workforce Management Reports

Workforce management (WFM) reports are instrumental to contact centers in their quest to optimize staffing levels, ensure operational efficiency, and improve agent performance. Key WFM reports include:

• Real-Time and Historical Agent Performance Reports: Monitor your agents’ workload, occupancy rates, and performance to improve scheduling accuracy, cut overall labor costs, and make data-driven real-time adjustments periodically and immediately
• Staffing Requirements Reports: Examine workforce needs to meet service level targets, accommodate interaction volume, and cut handling times. Ensure the right number of agents are available at all times.
• Forecasting and Scheduling: Predict call volumes, peak times, and required staffing levels based on historical data and AI-driven analytics. Helps managers optimize schedules to meet demand without overstaffing.
• Schedule Adherence Reports: Track how closely agents follow their assigned schedules, measuring adherence and identifying productivity gaps due to absenteeism, breaks, or unplanned downtime.

Benefits of Contact Center Reporting

Contact center reporting tools benefit your business by helping you build a more cost-effective, efficient, and customer-centric contact center.

Improved Decision-Making

Equipping your managers with relevant real-time data on call center metrics like agent performance, call volume, and customer satisfaction through contact center reporting leads to better decision-making. Using data-driven insights, managers can better allocate resources to combat high call volumes and eliminate bottlenecks in service.

Higher Agent Performance

Foster a culture built on accountability and self-improvement by providing individual agents with performance data. Whether it’s their Adherence to Schedule, Call Resolution Rate, or Average Handle Time, these reports identify areas where agents may need additional training.

Employee disengagement is a silent killer, businesses risk losing $12,000 per employee due to disengagement.[*] Agent performance monitoring can increase employee engagement and retention rates by providing custom feedback and gamification opportunities.

Optimized Workforce Management

Call center reporting helps supervisors better manage their workforce by giving an overview of peak times and call volume. Staffing needs are not static, they change from time to time. Reports contain valuable insights that can improve operational efficiency, preventing overstaffing to reduce costs or understaffing to better improve the customer experience.

By optimizing schedules, managers reduce agent burnout and empower agents to take more control of their own schedules via shift swapping. Supervisors can also ensure each shift contains agents with diverse skill sets to maximize issue coverage and prevent workflow bottlenecks.

Better Customer Experience

80% of customers value their experience with a company as much as its products and services.[*]

Contact center reporting can spotlight areas holding back your customer service experience by providing metrics like CSATs or first call resolution rates. These insights can help improve your resolution rates and reduce your wait times to improve customer satisfaction.

Cost Savings

About $1.6 trillion is lost yearly in the United States alone because of bad customer experiences.[*] Contact center reporting will help you identify your operation’s inefficiencies and where exactly you may be overspending. Find loose ends like underused staff or unnecessarily lengthy call flows.

AI-powered resource allocation analytics puts algorithms and machine learning to work to help you better manage staffing, budgets, and equipment to boost productivity and reduce spending. Reporting insights like call volume trends and average handle time cuts down on overstaffing and average call times to reduce the average cost per call.

Key Metrics for Contact Center Reporting

The key metrics when it comes to contact center reporting vary by reporting type, though some reports may have some overlap in specific KPIs. The best way to get a complete picture of contact center activity and trends is by leveraging multiple types of reports, including call volume, agent performance, customer satisfaction, and call center performance.

Agent Performance

• First Call Resolution (FCR): Percentage of customer calls that are entirely resolved during their first interaction with a live agent or self-service tool–meaning no follow-up is required
• Average Handle Time (AHT): The average amount of time it takes an agent to complete a customer support interaction, including pre-call and after-call work, hold time, talk time, and follow-ups
• Escalation Rate: Monitors how often agents must bring a customer issue to a supervisor or a higher tier of support, can reveal if agents need more training
• Tickets Handled Per Hour: How many customer inquiries an agent takes on during an hour
• Agent Turnover Rate: The percentage of contact center employees who leave their jobs within a year

Call Volume

• Total Call Volume: The total number of calls handled by the contact center during a given period to determine demand and improve resource allocation
• Abandonment Rate: The percentage of callers who hang up before speaking to a live agent
• Peak Call Volume: Uncovers the periods with the highest call frequency to optimize agent schedules
• Average Speed of Answer (ASA): The average time (or number of rings) it takes for a call to reach an agent.
• Inbound/Outbound Call Ratio: The ratio of calls made to the contact center (incoming calls) versus calls made out of the facility (outbound calls)

Customer Satisfaction

• Customer Effort Score (CES): Measures the effort it takes for a customer to resolve their issues and the functionality of your products/services, a lower score shows user-friendliness
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): A direct, post-interaction survey where customers rate their experience from a scale of 1-10
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Assesses customer loyalty by querying customers how likely they are to recommend a company to their friends/family
• Customer Churn Rate: The percentage of your customers that cancel or discontinue their subscription within a given time period

Call Center Performance

• Agent Occupancy: Percentage of time agents are engaged in dealing with customers versus time spent idle to help balance workloads and prevent burnout
• Cost per Call: Combines wages, overhead, utilities, and more to calculate the cost of a single call
• Missed Call Ratio: Measures how many inbound calls are sent to voicemail because no agents are available
• Call Queue Length: Determined by the maximum number of calls that can wait in a call queue before new calls cannot join or be attended to
• Cost Per Contact: Measures the average cost of each interaction your business makes

Best Tools and Software for Contact Center Reporting

Effective contact center reporting is critical to polishing performance, improving customer experience, and making data-driven decisions. Here are some leading CCaaS providers compared in terms of how they do reporting:

Genesys Cloud CX

Genesys Cloud CX offers both real-time and historical reporting, with customizable dashboards that track KPIs such as agent performance, queue activity, and customer interactions. Its AI-driven predictive analytics help businesses identify trends, forecast demand, and improve workforce management. Users can generate custom reports with flexible filtering and visualization options, making it easy to analyze specific performance data.

• Customizable dashboards – Tailor reports with drag-and-drop widgets, graphs, and charts for a personalized analytics experience.
• Advanced filtering & drill-down reports – Refine data views by agent, queue, time period, or other key metrics for deeper insights.
• AI-driven predictive analytics – Leverage machine learning to forecast call volumes, optimize staffing, and detect emerging trends.
• Real-time alerts & anomaly detection – Stay ahead of issues with automated notifications when performance deviates from expected thresholds.
• Omnichannel analytics – Track customer interactions across voice, chat, email, and social channels for a comprehensive view.

Best for: Enterprise contact centers seeking AI-enhanced reporting, predictive analytics, and customizable data visualization.

NICE CXone

NICE CXone provides top tier AI-driven analytics and reporting tools, including customer journey analytics, sentiment analysis, and predictive modeling. Its customizable reports and real-time dashboards provide deep insights into agent performance, customer satisfaction, and operational bottlenecks. It also takes into account quality management and speech analytics, giving businesses more chances to monitor interactions for compliance and sentiment.

• AI-powered sentiment analysis – Automatically assesses customer emotions and tone to improve service quality.
• Customer journey analytics – Maps out interactions across multiple touchpoints to identify friction points and optimize engagement.
• Predictive modeling – Uses AI-driven insights to anticipate customer behavior and improve decision-making.
• Quality management & compliance tracking – Ensures adherence to industry regulations and internal performance standards.
• Dynamic real-time dashboards – Monitor live operational metrics with interactive and customizable data views.

Best for: Large organizations needing AI-driven insights, customer journey tracking, and compliance-focused reporting.

Five9

Five9 offers real-time dashboards and pre-built reports that encompass critical KPIs like agent productivity, call handling times, and customer engagement. Five9 offers AI-powered analytics for speech and sentiment analysis, but its reporting tools are less customizable compared to Genesys and NICE CXone. However, Five9's reports are user-friendly and simple, making them a solid option for businesses that need out-of-the-box insights without complex customization.

• Pre-built reports for quick insights – Get instant access to key metrics without extensive setup or customization.
• Real-time dashboards – Monitor live call activity, queue performance, and agent efficiency at a glance.
• Speech & sentiment analysis – AI-powered tools analyze conversations for tone, keywords, and compliance indicators.
• Workforce optimization tools – Integrated scheduling and performance tracking help managers allocate resources efficiently.
• User-friendly reporting interface – Designed for ease of use, making it accessible for teams with minimal technical expertise.

Best for: Businesses looking for straightforward, pre-built reports and real-time analytics without extensive customization.

Nextiva Contact Center

Nextiva’s reporting tools focus on simplicity and ease of use, providing real-time analytics, historical reports, and AI-powered customer insights. Its visual dashboards track call quality, agent performance, and customer sentiment, helping businesses make informed decisions quickly. Nextiva also offers automated reports that can be scheduled and sent to key stakeholders, making data analysis more efficient.

• Intuitive visual dashboards – Easily track call quality, response times, and agent performance with clear, graphical reports.
• Automated reporting & scheduling – Set up recurring reports to be delivered directly to management and stakeholders.
• AI-powered customer sentiment analysis – Understand customer satisfaction trends and identify service improvement opportunities.
• Live call monitoring & performance tracking – Managers can monitor calls in real time and provide coaching as needed.
• Cloud-based scalability – Ideal for growing businesses that need flexible and reliable analytics tools.

Best for: Small to mid-sized businesses prioritizing ease of use, automated reporting, and AI-powered customer insights.

Best Practices for Contact Center Reporting

The following best practices will help you create impactful, real-time reports that drive smarter decisions, improve agent performance, and elevate the customer experience.

Define Clear Objectives Before Collecting Data

Why it matters: Data without a clear goal leads to wasted effort and analysis paralysis.

• Before generating reports, define what success looks like for your contact center.
• Align your reporting objectives with specific business goals—e.g., reducing wait times, improving CSAT, or increasing first call resolution (FCR).
• Pro tip: Every report should answer a key business question, such as "How are agent response times impacting customer churn?"

Actionable Insight: Create a reporting roadmap that outlines which KPIs matter most at each customer journey stage.

Segment Data for Deeper Insights

Why it matters: A one-size-fits-all report can hide critical performance gaps.

• Break down reports by contact channel, customer demographics, agent performance, or issue type to identify specific trends.
• Example: If chat support has a higher CSAT than phone support, you can investigate response times, training gaps, or self-service options.
• Use time-based segmentation (hourly, daily, seasonal) to anticipate peak demand and adjust staffing accordingly.

Actionable Insight: Set up custom reports that allow managers to drill down into specific teams, shifts, or customer pain points.

Prioritize Actionable Metrics

Why it matters: More data isn’t always better—focusing on the wrong metrics can lead to misguided decisions.

• Identify 2-3 key metrics that directly impact your current goals.
• Example: If you want to increase customer retention, tracking CSAT, NPS, and average handle time (AHT) will be more valuable than general call volume.
• Continually refine your KPIs—if a metric isn’t driving decisions, it shouldn’t take up reporting space.

Actionable Insight: Implement real-time KPI dashboards that adapt based on emerging trends, rather than relying on static monthly reports.

Automate Reports to Save Time & Improve Accuracy

Why it matters: Manual reporting wastes valuable hours and increases the risk of outdated insights.

• Use AI and machine learning analytics to process high volumes of data quickly and uncover trends you may have missed.
• Automate routine reports for real-time updates on call volumes, agent performance, or customer sentiment analysis.
• Pro tip: Set up trigger-based alerts—for example, receive an instant notification if CSAT drops below 80%.

Actionable Insight: Invest in a real-time analytics dashboard that integrates with your CRM and contact center software.

Benchmark Performance Against Industry Standards

Why it matters: You can’t improve what you don’t measure against benchmarks.

• Compare your contact center's performance to industry averages to gauge competitiveness.
• Track historical trends to identify seasonal fluctuations or ongoing performance gaps.
• Use benchmarking to set progressive performance targets for agents, teams, and overall service levels.

Actionable Insight: Regularly review benchmark reports to track improvements and validate the impact of strategic changes.

Next Steps for Adopting Contact Center Reporting

Adopting contact center reporting boosts contact center efficiency, lowers operating costs, and improves the customer and agent experience. New developments in contact and call center software analytics like Conversation AI, gamification, and agent performance scoring open up opportunities for further workplace optimization.

Combining contact center reports with AI-powered analytics helps you quickly resolve current issues while forecasting and preparing for future scenarios.