Customer Experience

The Top 7 Ways to Assess Your Customer Service Performance

From retention rate to resolution rates, these seven customer service KPIs and metrics can tell you if your service team is offering the help customers need.

Stephanie Whitmore
    • Poor customer service is the top reason that customers switch to another company.
Over two-thirds of customers who leave report dissatisfaction with service as the reason for the change, and unhappy customers tend to talk, sharing their experiences with 9-15 people each. In 2018, customer loss cost businesses $75 billion. Lackluster customer care will have major costs down the road.
    Your customer service team is the link between your company and your clients, so their service level can make or break your business. But how can you ensure your team is providing the white-glove service your customers expect?
    Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics help root out and correct thorny service issues. Read on for your guide to the essential KPIs to monitor for your customer service team as well as important ways to make sure your agents are hitting their goals.

What’s the difference between a KPI and a metric?

    “KPI” and “metric” each refer to a different aspect of your business. Both help measure and analyze important factors in your company.
    KPIs determine how successfully you’re achieving business objectives and how well you’re reaching your goals. These may be short-term goals, like incremental increases in production, or a long-term growth of your customer base. Measuring customer service indicators often depends on direct customer feedback.
    Metrics measure the effectiveness of your specific business processes, from productivity to service levels. Service metrics are numbers that you want your customer-facing associates to achieve and can generally be measured with data gathered from your internal systems. For example, your system will log the time a customer request is received, and when their ticket is resolved. The difference in those times will be used to measure your average resolution rate. Check out the specific metrics below for more information on harnessing the right data.

The Top 7 Ways to Assess Your Customer Service Performance

    As you can see, effectively managing your customer service teams can have a huge impact on your bottom line. The KPIs and metrics below will help measure your agents’ quality of service, pinpoint areas that need to be improved and increase your overall customer satisfaction rate.

1. Customer Retention Rate (CRR)

    One of the most important factors in your company’s success is the percentage of your customers that stick with you. Since losing customers can cause severe losses to your revenue, this is a KPI that you can’t ignore.
    Choose a specific length of time to measure customer retention—it might be a matter of weeks or months or even an annual figure. To find your customer retention rate, subtract the number of new customers acquired during the selected time period from your total number of customers, and divide by the number of customers you had at the beginning of the time period. Multiply by 100 to get your percentage.
    • Take a look at your rate against the
average for your industry. If you’re below the average, it’s time to reach out to prior and existing customers with surveys to find out why they switched.

2. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

    The customer satisfaction KPI sounds like it speaks for itself, but there’s more to it than just a baseline level of service. Almost every aspect of your business—from product to service to troubleshooting—contributes to your CSAT measurement.
    • The
main ways to measure customer satisfaction are customer feedback and service team data metrics. Surveying customers after they’ve interacted with the customer service team provides a lot of information about their satisfaction. Other metrics include net promoter scores (NPS, see below), social media interaction and churn rate.
    If you’re losing customers at a higher rate than average for your industry, you should look into ways to improve your customer satisfaction score. Analyze the feedback you receive from customer surveys to find actionable items. Is your response rate too slow? Do customers have to reach out multiple times to get their issue resolved? Find more suggestions in the section on “How to use KPIs and Metrics” below.

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

    • The customer effort score measures the difficulty or ease with which a customer can conduct business with you. Customers—especially e-commerce and technology customers—have less patience than ever to search for products, purchase or return items or get help troubleshooting issues. You need to
make it easy for your customer to do business with you.
    The customer effort score KPI can be effectively measured with a simple survey as people are finishing a transaction or information request. Ask how easy it was for the customer to resolve their business with you and how satisfied they are with the interaction, and provide seven responses that range from very easy to very difficult. Optimal CES should average five or higher.

4. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

    Customer recommendations drive the growth of your business. When customers are enthusiastic about your product and service, they’ll be more willing to refer their friends and family members—or maybe even just people on the street, if you’re good enough!
    • This metric is an established, data-driven indicator of a company’s success. A net promoter score falls in one of three categories:
      • A promoter is a customer who loves doing business with you and wants to let others know.
      • A neutral customer may or may not recommend your company if asked, and may be susceptible to another company’s outreach.
      • A detractor will let everyone know about the poor product and service they’ve received at your company.
      To calculate NPS, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters that you receive. Gather these scores by emailing surveys to your clients after they interact with your service or sales teams.
      The NPS goal you set for your teams will depend on various factors, which may be industry-specific but also hinges on each unit’s business purpose. For example, the rewards department will usually have a higher overall NPS than the escalations unit does. Set a reach goal for each team as a challenge to create exceptional customer experiences.

    5. Average Ticket Resolution Rate

      In our fast-paced digital world, customers expect a quick turnaround when they have a question or problem with your product. Customers want to feel heard and understood, and quickly on their first request.
      The average ticket resolution rate is a fairly straightforward metric to measure. You can monitor how long each help desk ticket takes to resolve and divide by the number of tickets your team handles. This metric helps you identify the success of individual agents as well as the systems you’ve put into place. The average resolution rate should meet 74%, though this percentage varies based on industry, contact method and complexity of the request.
      • Whether your helpdesk is live staffed or AI-based, an intelligent knowledge base tool
    like PubHub will immediately streamline your ticket resolution rate. Simple but effective solutions like these can have a huge impact on improving customer satisfaction.

    6. Response Time

      Your response time metric goal depends on the methods your customer uses to contact you. Phone calls should have short hold times and quick resolutions. The average response time over social media is an hour; for an email, customers expect a response within 24 hours at a maximum, though most customers want a more immediate reply.
      The lower your response time, the better—though the quality of the response matters as well. If a chatbot responds within seconds but fails to resolve the customer’s issue, the response rate matters less than the frustration your customer might feel.

    7. Escalation Rate

      When your agent can’t resolve a request, your customer might ask to speak to a supervisor. The percentage of tickets that get transferred to your escalation queue defines your escalation rate KPI. While not every ticket or contact can be resolved by a core agent, you want to keep your escalation rate as low as possible.
      A “good” escalation rate varies from industry to industry. If your escalation rate starts to rise, take a look at how you’re empowering your agents. You might be able to provide more tools that can get the job done without involving your second tier.

    How to Use KPIs and Metrics to Improve Customer Satisfaction

      You might have noticed that some of these metrics dovetail with one another. For example, response time has an effect on customer effort score and ticket resolution rate. All of these measures may combine to give you an idea of your agents’ NPS.
      • To quote the great management guru
    Peter Drucker, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
      If you’re not monitoring any customer service KPIs or metrics, you can start today! The first step is to decide which KPIs or metrics you want to start with. You may already suspect your response time is too long or your customers are leaving at a higher rate than they should be. Choose two or three measures to focus on to start with so that you can effectively monitor the data and make needed changes.
      Once you’ve collected your data, you’ll have the information you need to improve your metrics and increase overall customer satisfaction. Remember that improvement is a continuous process that sometimes takes longer than we’d like. Be patient and share data and customer feedback with your teams as needed.

    Find Out What Works for You–And Your Customers

      Your customers expect experienced, responsive, empathetic service, and measuring KPIs and metrics will help your agents provide that. With this data, you can coach low-performing agents and ensure that your clients receive the support that will keep them happy.
      • Don’t let low customer satisfaction sink your business! A wide range of tools exist to make your product support operation more efficient even as they galvanize your customer relationships. Tweddle Group’s
    customizable solutions can help bring your customer service performance to new heights.
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