Contact center reporting guide and key metrics for business to track

As a manager or supervisor, contact center reporting is one of your most important responsibilities.

Effective call center reporting helps teams measure performance, empower agents to do their best work, and keep stakeholders and executives informed on a regular basis. It turns raw interaction data into insights that support better decisions across operations, customer experience, and workforce management.

With so many metrics, historical reports, and data points to consider, however, knowing what to track and how to report on it can quickly become overwhelming.

This guide breaks down what contact center reporting is, the key metrics that matter most, common reporting mistakes to avoid, and best practices for building reports that drive real improvement. By the end, you’ll have a clearer framework for using call center reporting to improve performance, visibility, and outcomes across your contact center.

What is call center reporting?

Call center reporting is the process of collecting and analyzing data from customer interactions across channels such as voice, chat, and digital support tools. It turns real-time and historical data into clear call center reports and call center reporting metrics that show how your contact center is performing.

Effective contact center reporting and analytics help organizations improve customer service, strengthen agent performance, and make better strategic decisions. In addition to tracking customer satisfaction, reporting can reveal agent activity, workload distribution, and performance trends at both the individual and team level.

By comparing these insights against internal goals and industry benchmarks, leaders can identify gaps, optimize operations, and continuously improve outcomes across the contact center.

8 contact center metrics and KPIs to know

1. Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores are probably one of the most common KPIs in contact center reporting. CSAT measures how happy your customers are with a specific interaction with your business, and CSAT scores are obtained through customer feedback surveys sent immediately after a customer finishes a chat or call with your support team.

They’ll usually be asked to rate their customer experience out of either five or 10. The higher the rating, the more satisfied the customer.

In Dialpad’s contact center platform, we can create CSAT surveys with just a few clicks:

One of the biggest challenges with CSAT scores, though, is that not a lot of people take the time to fill out those surveys.

In fact (depending on the industry and specific business of course), we've found that on average only about 5% of customers actually fill out CSAT surveys. Plus, usually only the angriest—and happiest—customers actually bother responding, which means your CSAT answers are likely to be very skewed and not representative of how your customers feel overall.

Dialpad's industry-first AI CSAT feature is designed to solve exactly that. Not only can our AI transcribe calls and analyze sentiment in real time, it can also infer CSAT scores for 100% of your customer calls thanks to its hyper-accurate predictive analytics and transcription feature. The result? A much more representative sample size for CSAT scores, and a more accurate understanding of how satisfied your customers really are:

And that’s just one example of what contact center AI can do. Dialpad's built-in AI enables a number of other automations, like live sentiment analysis, which helps busy supervisors keep an eye on multiple active calls at once in case a conversation goes south.

2. Net promoter score

Your net promoter score (NPS) is a way of measuring your customers’ experience in terms of how likely they are to recommend you to their friends or network.

An NPS survey asks your customer one simple question: “On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend [name of your company or product] to a friend or family member?”

The higher the rating, the more likely they are to recommend you, which means increased word-of-mouth promotion for your business. Basically, free marketing. This is hard to measure out in the wild, so gathering an NPS score from customers gives you an approximation of how much word-of-mouth advertising they might be giving you.

With Dialpad, NPS tracking can be integrated into contact center workflows and reporting dashboards, allowing teams to connect customer feedback with interaction data. This makes it easier to analyze NPS trends alongside call center reporting metrics, identify drivers of customer loyalty, and take targeted action to improve the customer experience.

Here’s how to calculate your NPS:

3. Customer effort score (CES)

Customer effort score (CES) measures how easy or difficult it is for customers to complete a task or resolve an issue when interacting with your business. It focuses on the amount of effort customers must expend, which has a direct impact on satisfaction and loyalty.

Examples of customer actions commonly measured with CES include:

• Reaching the correct department without repeated transfers

• Resolving an issue in a single interaction

• Getting a refund or processing a return

• Updating account information or making a change to a service

• Finding answers to common questions without needing to contact support

• Completing a transaction or request through self-service channels

Some of these experiences depend heavily on agent performance and call routing within your contact center, such as transfer handling or first-contact resolution. Others are influenced by how well your systems are set up, including your IVR, ACD, or digital channels like your website and help center.

4. Average handle time

Average handle time measures agent productivity in terms of how long they spend handling individual inbound calls.

Customers don’t tend to be very patient, and you’ll want to answer their questions as quickly and efficiently as possible. With that being said, it’s the complexity of the issue that determines how long it will take to resolve, which is why average handle time (AHT) should generally be more of a guide than a strict goal.

A sudden spike in AHT can point to gaps in your contact center training, for example. A low AHT might look good on paper, but when coupled with lower satisfaction or resolution rates, it could suggest that agents are rushing to end their phone calls. However this is why we recommend looking at various contact center metrics for a comprehensive view of your call center's performance and efficiency.

5. Service levels

Your service levels are essentially your contact center’s guarantee of service—for example, your service levels might be to answer least 75% of your inbound calls in under 30 seconds.

Some contact center reporting tools have built-in functionality to help keep you on top of your service levels. Dialpad, for instance, has an automation that pings supervisors when service levels drop below a certain threshold:

It’s a great contact center management feature for us.

6. Abandonment rate

Abandonment rate refers to the percentage of incoming customer interactions that end before reaching an agent. This can happen while customers are navigating an IVR menu, waiting in a queue, being routed through skills-based or priority routing, interacting with an AI receptionist, or attempting to resolve an issue through self-service options.

In contact centers that use agentic AI, some interactions may be handled or resolved automatically before a human agent is involved, making it especially important to understand when and why customers disengage during the experience.

It goes without saying that you’ll want to have a low abandonment rate, but it’s important to acknowledge that abandoned calls are common for contact centers—it’s impossible to completely eliminate abandoned calls. So, your goal should be more about determining why callers are hanging up to see what you can do to lower the rate.

High wait or hold times are a common cause of abandonment, but customers may also disengage due to unclear IVR menus, inefficient routing, or confusion during automated or self-service interactions.

7. First call resolution

Your first call resolution (FCR) rate (or first contact resolution, since there are channels other than phone calls), measures how often a customer reaches out to you and gets their issue resolved on the first attempt.

On a business level, high FCR rates can lower call volumes and reduce operational costs, not to mention keep customers happy.

As always, though, there are exceptions and caveats to keep in mind. For example, agents who commonly handle complex issues may have a higher FCR rate, so you’ll want to take this into account when you’re doing reporting and analysis on agent performance.

8. Occupancy rate

Occupancy rate is the percentage of time agents spend on call-related activities. This includes wait times and after-call work like data entry.

A 100% occupancy rate should not be the goal of your call center operations. Unless your agents are literally robots, then 100% occupancy is not realistic—or healthy. It would mean that agents are handling an extremely high number of calls, all back-to-back, from the second they walk into the office to the second they leave. (Even if by some miracle you hit this benchmark, it’s unsustainable—your agent turnover will probably also be very high and morale very low.)

An 80–90% occupancy rate is optimal for most contact centers. You can even lower it to 70–75% depending on your call volumes. Agents should be spending time on other activities alongside calls, like training or simply taking a well-deserved breather!

In your reporting, make sure you set fair and realistic occupancy rates. Data visualizations that relate occupancy rates to call volumes or handling times can help guide your occupancy benchmarks.

Common call center reporting mistakes

Whether teams use templates or custom dashboards, many organizations run into the same challenges when building and reviewing call center reports. Avoiding these common mistakes can significantly improve the effectiveness of your call center analytics reporting.

Getting overwhelmed with KPIs

Not every contact center needs to track the same metrics, and monitoring too many KPIs at once can dilute focus. Effective reporting prioritizes the metrics that align with business goals, such as customer experience, agent performance, or operational efficiency. Strong call center metrics analytics and reporting starts with choosing the right indicators, not the most.

Incomplete data

Reports built on partial or inconsistent data can lead to inaccurate conclusions. Missing interaction channels, untracked call outcomes, or gaps in historical data make it difficult to understand true performance. Complete, unified data across voice and digital channels is essential for reliable call center reporting.

Outdated metrics

Relying on legacy metrics that no longer reflect how customers interact with your business can limit the value of reporting. As contact centers evolve to support new channels, automation, and workflows, reporting metrics must evolve as well. Regularly reviewing and updating metrics ensures reporting stays relevant and actionable.

Not using a robust analytics and reporting platform

Using disconnected tools or basic reporting solutions can limit visibility and increase manual effort. A modern contact center platform should provide built-in analytics, customizable reports, and real-time dashboards without requiring multiple third-party tools. This foundation allows teams to scale reporting as needs grow.

What to look for in contact center reporting software

Real-time analytics

Modern contact center analytics gives businesses visibility into performance across every customer touchpoint, not just phone calls. To get a complete picture, reporting must span all communication channels and bring data together in a single, consistent view.

Dialpad makes this possible with built-in, omnichannel analytics that allow teams to report on voice, chat, email, and social media interactions from one unified platform. This helps leaders compare performance across channels, identify trends, and make better-informed decisions without relying on disconnected tools.

Key reporting features include:

• Unified live dashboard

• Agent productivity

• Advanced talk time metrics

• Granular call abandonment insights

• Queue health report

• Callback effectiveness report

• Customizable & auto-saving reports

Integrations with other tools you’re using

Effective contact center reporting depends on data flowing between the systems your teams already rely on, such as integrations with CRMs, workforce tools, and business intelligence platforms. Without integrations, reporting can become fragmented and require unnecessary manual work.

Dialpad supports integrations with leading business tools, allowing contact center data to be connected with customer and operational systems for more complete, accurate reporting.

Workforce Management (WFM)

Workforce management analytics are essential for understanding how staffing, scheduling, and agent availability affect performance and service levels. These insights help leaders balance efficiency, workload, and customer experience.

Dialpad WFM provides advanced staffing, scheduling, and forecasting capabilities, making it easier to analyze workforce performance and align resources with demand.

Security and compliance measures

Handling customer data requires strict adherence to industry regulations and internal security standards. Contact center platforms must protect sensitive information, support compliance requirements, and provide administrators with control over how data is recorded, stored, and accessed.

Dialpad’s contact center solution is built with enterprise-grade security, including configurable data retention policies, call recording disclosures, and privacy controls that help organizations maintain compliance with standards such as HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR. In addition, Dialpad provides in-meeting security controls that allow hosts to manage participants, mute or remove guests, restrict screen sharing, and lock meetings to maintain a secure environment.

Bonus: Real-time transcription and live sentiment analysis

These aren’t your conventional analytics, but having a record of your customer conversations can be very helpful.

Dialpad’s built-in AI technology can transcribe both voice calls and video meetings in real-time:

And Dialpad AI doesn’t just transcribe conversations—it can analyze the sentiment of a call too. Supervisors can easily monitor multiple active calls and quickly see if a conversation is going south. If so, they’d just open up the real-time transcript to get more context, as the call is happening:

Then they can decide whether they need to jump in and help the agent. That’s a great example of how actionable insights can help you provide a better customer experience and help agents live on calls.

Need contact center reporting?

Instead of paying for a separate contact center reporting solution, why not use a robust contact center platform that comes with built-in analytics and dashboards that tell you everything from missed calls to average speed to answer, and key topics on customer calls?

See how Dialpad Support is designed to do exactly that!