Cost per Call Metric

How to calculate, track, and improve your call center's efficiency.

Cost per Call (CPC) is a key performance indicator (KPI) that measures the total expense incurred for each call handled by a call center or customer support team. By tracking this metric, managers can gain critical insight into operational efficiency, budget allocation, and overall profitability. Understanding your CPC helps you make informed decisions to optimize resource management and improve your bottom line.

What is the formula for Cost per Call?

To calculate Cost per Call, use the following formula:

What to include in "Total Cost of All Calls":

• Labor Costs: Salaries and wages for agents, supervisors, and managers.
• Technology Costs: Phone systems, CRM software subscriptions, and other tools.
• Overhead: Office space, utilities, and other general administrative expenses.
• Training Costs: Onboarding and ongoing development for call center staff.

Reporting Frequency: Monthly

Why is Cost per Call important?

Tracking your Cost per Call is essential for maintaining a healthy budget and an efficient operation. If your costs are steadily increasing, it could signal issues with agent productivity, technology, or call routing processes. For small and mid-sized businesses, where every dollar counts, monitoring this KPI helps ensure you're not overspending on customer interactions and are scaling your support operations sustainably.

Who uses Cost per Call?

• Call Center Managers use this metric to assess team performance, manage budgets, and justify technology investments.
• Financial Managers and CFOs track CPC to understand the cost of service delivery and its impact on the company's profitability.
• Team Leads monitor this KPI to identify opportunities for coaching and process improvements at the agent level.

What is a good Cost per Call benchmark?

While $10 per call is a common starting target, a "good" CPC can vary significantly based on your industry, business model, and the complexity of the calls you handle. For example:

• A simple inquiry to a retail business will have a much lower target CPC than a technical support call for a software company.
• Outbound sales calls will have a different cost structure than inbound support calls.

The key is to establish your own benchmark and track it consistently over time, aiming for gradual improvement.

How can you improve your Cost per Call?

Reducing your Cost per Call isn't about rushing customers off the phone. It's about increasing efficiency. Here are a few strategies:

• Invest in Training: Well-trained agents can resolve issues faster, reducing call times and improving customer satisfaction.
• Optimize Call Routing: Ensure calls are directed to the right agent on the first try to avoid transfers and wasted time.
• Embrace Self-Service: Use an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system or a knowledge base to help customers find answers to common questions without needing to speak to an agent.
• Automate Your Reporting: Stop wasting time manually compiling data in spreadsheets. Use a dashboarding tool to monitor your CPC and other critical KPIs in real-time.

How to track your Cost per Call

Manually tracking your Cost per Call in spreadsheets is time-consuming and prone to errors. It takes you away from the important work of managing your team and improving performance.

With Klipfolio Klips, you can connect directly to your phone systems, CRM, and financial software to automatically pull your data into a single, real-time dashboard. See your Cost per Call alongside other important metrics like Average Handle Time and First Call Resolution to get a complete picture of your call center's performance. Get everyone on the same page with a single source of truth that’s always up-to-date.