You measure your customer service accessibility objectively by tracking concrete KPIs, such as service level, average wait time, missed calls percentage and first contact resolution rate. Together, these metrics provide a reliable picture of how well customers can actually reach your team. In this article, we answer the most frequently asked questions about measuring customer service reachability and show you what data you really need.
What KPIs really say something about accessibility?
The KPIs that really say something about reachability are service level, percentage of missed calls, average wait time and abandonment rate. Together, these four metrics measure whether customers can reach your customer service department when they want to, and how long they have to wait to do so.
Many organizations only measure whether the phone is answered, but that only tells part of the story. The most informative KPIs for reachability are:
- Service level: the percentage of calls answered within a set time (for example, 80% within 20 seconds)
- Abandonment rate: the percentage of callers who hang up before an employee is available
- Average wait time: how long customers wait in the queue before being helped
- Percentage of missed calls: the proportion of incoming contacts that are not answered at all
- First contact resolution (FCR): the percentage of customers who are fully assisted at first contact without having to call back
FCR is a particularly powerful indicator because a low score often means that customers have to call multiple times for the same problem. This artificially increases contact volume and gives a distorted picture of actual accessibility.
What is the difference between reachability and availability?
Reachability and availability are related but distinctly different concepts. Availability is about the opening hours and channels on which your customer service is active. Reachability is about whether customers are actually helped within that available time, i.e., whether there is enough capacity to accommodate supply.
A customer service department can have excellent availability, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. via phone, e-mail and chat, and yet be poorly served when wait times reach 20 minutes or a large proportion of callers hang up before being helped.
Conversely, a customer service department with limited opening hours can still be readily accessible if staffing is well aligned with contact offerings. The distinction is important because it determines the direction of your improvement actions. Availability problems are solved by expanding opening hours or adding channels. Accessibility problems require better matching of capacity to demand, smarter routing or more efficient handling.
How do you calculate the service level for your customer service?
The service level is calculated by dividing the number of calls answered within the target time by the total number of calls offered multiplied by one hundred. The formula is: (number of calls answered within X seconds / total calls offered) x 100%. A common industry standard is 80% of calls answered within 20 seconds.
When calculating the service level, there are two choices that strongly influence the outcome:
- Do you handle dropped calls with it or not? Customers who hang up within seconds are sometimes left out of the calculation because they may have called by mistake. This artificially raises the service level.
- What is your time threshold? The standard of 80/20 is common, but depending on your industry and customer group, a stricter standard (e.g., 90% within 15 seconds) may better fit your customers’ expectations.
Make sure you apply and document the calculation method consistently within your organization so that trends over time are meaningful and your measurement method does not vary from period to period.
Why does one metric never give a complete picture?
One metric never gives a complete picture of customer service accessibility because each KPI measures only one dimension of customer contact. A high service level says nothing about the quality of the call or the number of times a customer has to call back. Only a combination of metrics reveals the true customer experience.
Suppose your service level is excellent: 90% of calls are answered within 20 seconds. But if the FCR is low, the same customers call three times for the same problem. Contact volume goes up, customer satisfaction goes down, and the service level tells you nothing about this underlying problem.
Conversely, a high customer satisfaction score can hide the fact that a portion of customers have already given up calling and simply no longer provide feedback. Therefore, reachability is always measured as an interplay of metrics:
- Quantitative metrics (wait time, service level, abandonment rate) for operational reality
- Quality metrics (FCR, customer satisfaction, net promoter score) for customer experience
- Trend data over time to see if improvements are actually having an effect
What data do you need to measure reachability?
To measure the accessibility of your customer service, you need at least data from your telephony environment or contact center system: the number of incoming contacts per channel, waiting times, dropped calls and handling times. For a complete picture, add customer feedback and cross-channel data.
In practice, these are the data sources you need:
- ACD or telephony data: incoming calls, queue information, service level by time period and employee
- CRM or ticket system data: repeat contacts, handling time by question type, FCR
- Omnichannel data: contact volumes by channel (phone, email, chat, WhatsApp) to get a complete picture of the total contact offering
- Customer feedback: customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), net promoter scores (NPS) or short post-contact surveys
A common problem is that these data sources are not linked. If telephony, chat and e-mail each have their own system without a central reporting layer, it is impossible to track a customer contact across channels. Then you don’t know if a customer who calls previously sent an e-mail that was not answered. That kind of insight is crucial to an honest picture of your reachability.
How often should you analyze reachability data?
You analyze reachability data on three levels: daily for operational direction, weekly for tactical adjustment and monthly for strategic trends. The frequency depends on the purpose of the analysis and your customer service contact volume.
Daily monitoring is useful for quickly spotting peaks and outages so you can make intraday adjustments in staffing or routing. Weekly analyses help you recognize patterns, such as structurally higher volumes on Monday mornings or recurring inquiries after a product change.
Monthly and quarterly reports are best suited to assess whether structural improvements are having an effect. Consider whether a new FAQ page has reduced the number of repeat contacts, or whether a change in IVR routing has increased service levels.
For each frequency of analysis, establish in advance who is responsible for interpretation and what actions are associated with which anomalies. Data without ownership rarely leads to improvement.
How Pegamento helps with customer service accessibility
We at Pegamento help organizations not only measure their customer service accessibility, but also structurally improve it. With our contact center technology, we bring all channels together in a single view, so you finally have the data you need to make informed decisions.
What we specifically do for you:
- Omnichannel reporting: phone, email, chat and WhatsApp in one central dashboard so you can measure service levels and accessibility across all channels
- Smart routing: customers go directly to the right employee, which reduces waiting times and increases service levels
- Agentic AI assistants: self-thinking assistants who not only follow instructions but take initiative independently, handle frequently asked questions outside office hours and reduce the pressure on your team
- One point of contact: from implementation to management and support, all under one roof without complex vendor management
No costly customization, but a smart combination of proven modules that fit your organization and sector exactly. Want to know how your reachability is doing now and where the biggest gains can be made? Contact us for an informal conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a realistic goal for service level when you are just starting to measure?
If you are just starting to structurally measure reachability, the common standard of 80% within 20 seconds is a good starting point. But even more important than the standard itself is to measure consistently over a longer period of time so that you first build a reliable baseline. Only then can you set meaningful goals that fit your industry, customer group and available capacity.
What common mistakes should I avoid when measuring reachability?
One of the most common mistakes is measuring only one KPI, such as only service level or only customer satisfaction, and drawing conclusions about overall reachability from that. Another pitfall is excluding dropped calls from the calculation, making the service level seem artificially high. Also, make sure your measurement method remains consistent across periods, otherwise trends are not reliably comparable.
How do I deal with spikes in contact volume that temporarily lower my reachability?
Spikes are rarely completely unexpected: they are often tied to fixed moments such as Monday mornings, billing periods or product launches. By analyzing historical data, you can predict these peaks and make proactive adjustments through flexible staffing, smart IVR routing or deploying AI assistants for frequently asked questions during busy periods. Also record the cause of unexpected peaks, so you can anticipate more quickly when they recur.
Does it make sense to measure reachability if my customer service is small, for example with five employees?
Especially with a small customer service, measuring is valuable, because the impact of one sick employee or an unexpected peak is immediately noticeable in your service levels and wait times. With a simple dashboard in your telephony system, you can quickly gain insight into the basic metrics. You don't have to start with a full omnichannel reporting system; start by tracking wait time, missed calls and handling time, and build from there.
How do I know if a low FCR score is an accessibility problem or a quality problem?
A low FCR score can have both causes, and you make the distinction by looking at the reason for repeat contact. If customers call back because their problem was not fully resolved, that indicates a quality problem in employee handling or knowledge. If customers call back because they previously could not get through or had to wait too long, there is an accessibility problem. For repeat contacts, structurally record the reason for calling back to be able to make this distinction.
What do I do if my data sources are not linked and I don't have a central overview?
Start by manually merging the available data from your separate systems into a shared reporting format, even if it is temporarily labor intensive. This will quickly give you insight into the biggest bottlenecks and help you build the business case for a centralized reporting layer or omnichannel platform. In the longer term, an integrated system is indispensable, because separate data sources make it impossible to understand channel-crossing customer behavior and assess your reachability fairly.
How do I involve my employees in improving reachability based on the measurement data?
Share reachability data not only at the management level, but also make them insightful for the employees who have daily customer contact. They are often the first to see where things go wrong in practice and have valuable input on causes that are not visible in the figures. Link the data to concrete improvement actions and briefly discuss weekly which trends stand out, so that employees feel ownership of the results and are motivated to contribute to improvement.
