The call center term “service level” generally refers to a percentage of time that contacts are answered within a certain period of time. For example, if the service level objective is 30 seconds, then the 30-second “service level” will be the percentage of calls that were answered within 30 seconds.
The service level time is typically measured from the time that a call arrives at the ACD to the time that the call is connected to an agent.
Many call centers have different service levels (e.g., such as a 30 second service level, a 20 second service level, etc.). These different service levels may be dictated by clients or by different campaigns.
Service levels should be reported across different reporting intervals. For example, a reporting interval may be half hour time increments, hour increments, etc.
Analytics should provide supervisors with these intervals in a reporting structure that allows the supervisors to spot trends (like declining service levels at an end of a shift, etc.).
Call center service levels are related to average speed of answer but are reported differently to identify specific staffing and handling issues.