Right first time rate: the quality number that cuts cost

Key takeaways

Right first time rate is the share of items completed correctly with no correction, query or repeat. It is the clearest link between quality and cost, because every item that fails is paid for at least twice. In our example, raising the rate from 85% to 95% on 1,000 items a month saves about 42 hours.

• Right first time: items completed with no correction or repeat.
• 85% to 95% saves about 42 hours a month in our example.
• Rework usually takes longer than the original task.
• Fix the cause of the commonest error before checking harder.

What is right first time?

Right first time (RFT) is a quality measure showing the percentage of work completed correctly at the first attempt, without needing to be fixed, redone or queried. It applies to any repeatable output: invoices, orders, data records, customer replies, reports.

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How do you calculate it?

Divide the number of items completed with no correction by the total completed, and multiply by 100. The hard part is counting corrections honestly. Include anything queried by a customer, returned by a colleague or changed after it was sent.

• 1. Define what counts as an error for this process.
• 2. Count items completed in the period.
• 3. Count items that needed any correction.
• 4. Subtract, divide by the total, multiply by 100.

• Cost baseline: measure today's cost before you change it
• Cost reduction KPIs: the numbers that prove savings are real

What does a poor rate cost?

A poor rate costs the time to find, fix and re-send each failed item, which is normally longer than doing it once. In an illustrative process handling 1,000 items a month, each takes 6 minutes and each correction takes 25. At 85% right first time, 150 corrections use 62.5 hours a month. At 95%, 50 corrections use about 21.

The difference is roughly 42 hours a month, about £830 at a loaded £19.81 per worked hour, or close to £10,000 a year. That excludes the cost of errors nobody caught.

• 85% RFT: 150 corrections, 62.5 hours a month.
• 95% RFT: 50 corrections, about 21 hours a month.
• Saving: about 42 hours a month.

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How do you raise the rate?

Raise the rate by removing the cause of the most frequent error, then the next. Log each failure with a reason. A few reasons will account for most failures, and they are usually about unclear input or an ambiguous step, not carelessness.

• Log every correction with a reason code.
• Rank reasons and fix the top one at source.
• Add required fields and validation at entry.
• Write the standard method and train to it.
• Sample work weekly and feed back within a day.

• Process standardisation: one best way, lower cost per task
• Straight-through processing: cut the touches per task
• Exception handling: the few cases that drive most cost

Is 100% the right goal?

Not always. The last few points are expensive, and for low-risk work the cost of preventing every error can exceed the cost of fixing the few that remain. Set the goal by consequence. A payment, a medical record or a legal document warrants near-perfect accuracy. An internal note does not.

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How should you use it with a provider?

With a provider, agree the definition of an error in writing, set a target rate in the service level agreement, and sample the output yourself for the first few months. Ask for the reason-code log each week. A provider that reports its own errors openly is more valuable than one reporting a perfect score.

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What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see when error logging starts: the team expects a long list of different mistakes and finds that one field on one form accounts for a large share of them. The field is ambiguous, and people guess. Rewording it does more than any amount of double-checking.

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Right first time checklist

Put these in place for each key process.

• An error is defined in writing.
• Corrections are logged with a reason.
• The rate is calculated monthly.
• The top reason has an owner.
• Input validation is in place.
• Work is sampled weekly.
• The target reflects the consequence of error.

• Continuous improvement in outsourcing: savings past year one
• Operational cost reduction checklist: 20 checks

Next step

Tell us which process generates the most corrections. We will help you set up an error log and work out what a better right first time rate would be worth.