How does your contact center perform compared to the competition? In the past, you could only guess, but not anymore — our new research report analyzed over 60 million phone conversations to put together these performance benchmarks.
Our analysis evaluated how often businesses are correctly handling phone leads. It examined eight key call handling metrics to identify the behaviors that they excel in, the outcome of calls, and how they rated the performance of the agent or location staff.
With these new benchmarks, you can identify strengths and weaknesses in your contact center compared to the market at large. This will allow you to make the right changes to improve coaching, agent performance, and ultimately revenue generation.
Let’s dive into the metrics and see how your contact center stacks up!
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Phone Call Handling Performance: All Industries
Contact center agents are often the first — and sometimes only — human connection a customer has with your brand. The way these calls are handled can make or break the customer experience. When agents are well-trained, empathetic, and empowered to resolve issues quickly and confidently, they not only convert leads but build lasting loyalty. A single great phone interaction can turn a one-time caller into a lifelong customer, while a poor experience can drive them straight to a competitor.
For our new Call Conversion Industry Benchmarks Report, we analyzed how well agents are handling phone calls as well as how their managers rate their calls. The benchmarks below are averaged across all industries:
Phone Call Handling Performance by Industry
While aggregate numbers are helpful, industry-specific metrics will give you a better idea of how you stack up. Different industries have vastly different standards, expectations, and goals when it comes to how agents handle calls. In healthcare, for example, empathy and confidentiality are paramount as agents handle sensitive conversations about care. In automotive, callers often want quick, accurate answers about pricing, availability, or service appointments. In financial services, trust and compliance are everything.
Check out the benchmarks below to see how you compare to your industry peers:
Tips to Improve Call Handling Performance with Invoca
1. Score call handling using AI
Many contact centers struggle to evaluate enough phone calls to accurately measure agent performance. This makes it difficult to identify strengths and weaknesses and tailor coaching programs to help agents develop. To solve this all-too-common issue, leading brands use AI-powered quality management to evaluate 100% of calls based on key performance criteria. This eliminates the limitations of manual call listening, which typically covers only a small percentage of conversations and often lacks consistency.
By using AI, you gain objective, data-driven insights into how your agents are handling every call, not just a small sample. It helps surface trends across locations or individual agents and ensures that nothing critical — like a missed sales opportunity or a compliance violation — slips through the cracks.
2. Refine talk tracks based on what works
Once your calls are scored, the next step is to analyze which agent behaviors consistently lead to successful outcomes. Invoca’s AI makes it possible to correlate specific language, phrases, or strategies with conversions, so you can move beyond guesswork and focus on what’s actually working.
This insight allows you to refine your talk tracks and scripts to mirror top-performing patterns across your team. That way, you can replicate your success across all of your contact centers and locations. Rather than treating scripts as rigid templates, you can evolve them into dynamic guides that reflect real-world interactions and proven techniques — ensuring every agent has the tools to succeed.
3. Identify specific calls for review
When issues arise, it’s no longer necessary to sift through hours of recordings to find problem calls. AI-powered call scoring highlights specific conversations that fall below your performance benchmarks, making it easy to identify which calls require human review.
Whether it’s a call where an agent didn’t greet the caller properly, failed to ask for the close, or escalated unnecessarily, you can zero in on what went wrong. This saves time and ensures that feedback is always based on actual performance — not assumptions or incomplete data.
4. Provide targeted coaching to agents
With the right calls identified, managers can provide laser-focused coaching tied to real examples. Instead of giving vague advice like “be more persuasive,” you can point to exact moments in a conversation where the agent missed an opportunity or could have handled a customer concern differently.
This approach makes feedback more actionable and personalized, helping agents understand the “why” behind the coaching. It builds skills more effectively, improves close rates, and boosts agent confidence, especially when they see that improvements are directly tied to measurable outcomes.
5. Monitor customer experience issues
Call handling doesn’t just impact conversions — it shapes the entire customer experience. By tracking metrics like hold times, transfer rates, and customer sentiment, you can uncover systemic issues that frustrate callers and drive down satisfaction.
For example, if sentiment analysis shows frequent negative tone after long hold times or repeated transfers, you can investigate whether the issue stems from staffing gaps, routing logic, or agent training. Addressing these friction points helps you not only convert more leads but build lasting customer relationships rooted in trust and positive experiences.
Download the Full Report to Get More Data
Want to see how you stack up against the competition? Download the Call Conversion Benchmarks Report for your industry:
- Automotive Industry Benchmarks
- Business Services Industry Benchmarks
- Consumer Services Industry Benchmarks
- Financial Services Industry Benchmarks
- Healthcare Industry Benchmarks
- Home Services Industry Benchmarks
- Senior Care Industry Benchmarks
- Telecommunications Industry Benchmarks
- Travel and Hospitality Industry Benchmarks
