First Contact Resolution – what it is, why it is important, and how to calculate it.

First Contact Resolution (FCR) assesses how well a business can respond to customer calls, emails, and other support requests via various channels during the initial engagement. No customer wants to keep contacting you repeatedly to resolve the same issue.

If a customer has to contact your customer service repeatedly for the same issue, it affects your customer retention. This is why First Contact Resolution is an important customer service KPI you should take care of.

Focusing on the FCR rate helps you improve customer service delivery speed and quality. This, in turn, increases customer satisfaction and also improves customer experience.

How to derive your FCR rate?

Here's how you calculate FCR.

Divide the number of customer issues resolved on the first call by the total number of cases handled in a day.

The first call resolution rate, on average, is 74% across the industry. But this changes according to the type of request, the platforms used to raise and resolve these requests, the type of business, etc.

FCR rates around 90% are generally viewed as high, while 40% is regarded as the bottom end.

Want to learn more about crucial customer service KPIs you should track? We have done the homework for you.