Keeping tabs of your outsourced customer service is vital for ensuring that your startup business is on the right track. But with hundreds of variables, it can be a challenging task. To have a strong start, here are the most important ones that you should always be monitoring.
Customer Service Metric No. 1: First Response Time
First response time refers to how fast your team answers customers’ initial inquiries. This time is based on the instance from when the customer sends a message to when the agent responds. Note that this does not take into account whether the issue is resolved on the first interaction.
The goal of the metric is to simply indicate how fast your agents can respond. Many customers simply need an assurance that their issues will be handled, even if they would not be resolved yet in the initial call. Hence, a fast first response gives them the confidence in your ability to resolve the issue.
Improving The Metric For A Strong Start
To get the average first response time for your team, you simply get the sum of all their response times, You then divide this by the number of resolved customer tickets. Note that average first response time will vary across channels.
You generally want your FRTs to be within just a day. To improve on this, set up an internal goal for your teams. If they are not able to meet it, explore the reasons why. For instance, there might be too many tickets coming in for that particular period. You might also consider whether adding more agents will lessen the strain.
Customer Service Metric No. 2: Number Of Interactions Per Case
Ideally, you want to resolve customer issues within the initial communications. But that is often not the case, as agents might need to conduct several interactions to fully resolve it. This is where the number of customer interactions comes into play.
The customer metric indicates the efficiency of the support team. If the number of interactions is too high, it can mean that your service agents are not asking the right questions. It might also indicate that customers are not getting to the right people immediately.
Improving The Metric For A Strong Start
To reduce the number of interactions needed for resolving an issue, help your agents better answer queries. Teach them how they can better understand customer questions. In particular, they need to quickly determine if there is information missing. From there, they can formulate quick questions that will provide the information.
On the other hand, your agents should avoid asking questions whose answers can be easily found in the company database. They must be diligent to do their research to quickly fill in any missing details. For your part, provide your in-house and outsourced customer support with scripts that will help them navigate common concerns.
Customer Service Metric No. 3: Average Issue Count
Tracking the number of issues dealt with during a particular month gives you plenty of information about the business. First off, you see how well the product is being received. For instance, while the increased number of issues might indicate customer concerns about your products, it also highlights the greater demand for the product.
Another information that you can get by studying this customer metric is the frequency of certain issues. Here, you will need to get deeper into the kind of issues that your agents encounter. Keeping track of these recurring issues will help you determine the best course of action that your team can take to resolve them.
Improving The Metric For A Strong Start
Rather than directly trying to reduce the average number of service requests, you should instead need to focus on how to manage their contents. This depends largely on the kind of issues that you observe on the tickets.
If you are receiving more product-related issues, for instance, you will need to focus on enhancing the product in question. In the case of an increased number of service-related tickets, look into the reasons and relay your findings to the support teams. You can also use the monthly ticket volume data to predict when an increase will occur. You can then plan out how to prepare for this.
Customer Service Metric No. 4: Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
This metric provides a quantitative score of how satisfied customers are with your service. It is generally gathered through the use of tools like surveys and quick feedback from customers. The cumulative score you get will give you an idea of how well you are doing.
Do note that satisfaction is an inherently qualitative metric. That means you will have to use CSAT scores with other metrics. like the Customer Effort Score (discussed below). This will provide you with a more comprehensive picture of customers’ attitude towards you.
Improving The Metric For A Strong Start
Improving your customer satisfaction score involves understanding what people mean with their ratings. To do that, you will need to provide follow-up questions to help them better articulate their reasons. Note that you have to build these questions the right way to get better responses.
Another way that you can use CSAT is by tracking individual agents’ ratings over time. Through this, you will be able to determine whether the agent is having a hard time handling calls. By intervening, you will help them better respond to service requests.
Customer Service Metric No. 5: Customer Effort Score
One indicator that your business has a strong start is if customers find it easy to get their issues resolved. This is where the Customer Effort Score becomes useful. The idea here is that the less effort they need to transact with you, the more loyal they
To get the CES, you provide a single question asking customers how they will rate the ease of doing business with you. You then average all the ratings you get for a certain period and put it against the rating system you devised.
Improving The Metric For A Strong Start
As is with CSAT, the customer effort score does not always provide a clear-cut assessment on its own. You need to combine it with other metrics to see the bigger picture. Putting it in context with the customer’s overall experience will also help you understand the rationale behind the rating.
For instance, while the customer might generally have a good experience during their purchase, they might have encountered some service issues. This can lead to lower CES. By going deeper, you can understand what happened and use it to regain their trust.
Give Your Business A Strong Start Tracking The Right Metrics
When combined, these five customer service metrics will give you a good idea of how effective you are at supporting patrons. But they are not the be-all, end-all. Other metrics will give you a closer look at the specifics of your service efforts. Be sure to keep tabs on all of these to help your business have a strong start.