Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a subset of indicators that help assess whether a company is heading in the right direction. At first look, customer service KPI numbers appear to take a back seat to typical business KPIs such as profits, costs, and regional sales.
However, essential customer support indicators may provide a more full picture of success for a company’s long-term survival.
Customer obsession, according to Jeff Bezos, is “the first and by far the most essential” factor to developing a successful business. Amazon isn’t the only company that believes this: Netflix is one of several Fortune 500 companies that think happy customers are the backbone of a successful business. So, which KPI measures for customer service are worth stressing over?
In this article, we will cover all you need to know about customer service KPIs, such as:
- What is the significance of customer service metrics?
- What are the most critical KPI KPIs for customer service teams?
- What exactly is a KPI dashboard for customer service?
- Why are high customer service KPIs so difficult to achieve?
- How can you improve customer service KPIs?
Why are KPIs for customer service so important?
Customer service teams have their job cut out for them: they must optimise margins and decrease expenses while still offering a greater degree of care that satisfies current consumers’ expectations for rapid, personal, and seamless support.
It is now commonly acknowledged that the stakes for support teams have never been greater. People are increasingly basing their purchasing decisions on the assistance they receive. After one bad customer service encounter, customers will quit doing business with a company.
Support management must monitor the performance of their customer support team in order to identify areas for development, identify strategies that are effective, and recognise exceptional performance since the support may have a significant influence on a company’s bottom line and top line.
To achieve that, it is necessary to continuously monitor a set of customer service key performance indicators in order to modify procedures or improve employee training.
The performance of your team can be seen clearly and objectively when the correct KPIs are being tracked, and this in turn has a growing influence on a company’s bottom line. Now let’s look at what those are.
What are the most significant KPIs for customer service teams?
It is more vital than ever for customer service teams to understand how they are performing in comparison to the expectations of their customers.
Every customer service employee must regularly monitor certain key performance indicators (KPIs). Some are based on highly concrete measures, such as resolution time, whilst others consider your customers’ attitudes about your organisation and how they evaluated a conversation.
Here is the complete list of the top 10 customer service KPIs and metrics that modern professionals need to know:
- Abandon Rate: An acceptable abandonment rate is between 2 and 5%. Keep a tight eye on this KPI for your multiple support channels to prevent it from increasing.
- Average Resolution Time: Investigate weeks with high-resolution timings in further detail to spot obstacles like a lack of agent training or a shortage of employees to meet demand.
- Average Response Time: To maintain response times as short as possible, you must have enough agents accessible to meet projected demand: measuring the amount of daily, weekly, or monthly calls is another support metric to check.
- Customer Churn: Monitor customer churn over time to determine what causes higher rates in order to improve future results.
- Customer Effort Score: The customer effort score, like the net promoter score, is closely related to satisfaction rates and business growth, thus you should try to reduce it as much as possible.
- Cost Per Resolution: Compare this KPI to others, such as agent utilisation or ticket handling time, to draw more detailed conclusions regarding costs and how to reduce them.
- Customer Retention: Every company should strive for a higher retention rate, which is why it should be one of the primary support KPIs to track. A generally favourable brand image and high satisfaction score will boost your client retention immediately.
- Customer Satisfaction: Of course, the greater this score, the better. Implementing a writing box may also be a great approach to getting qualitative feedback that will help you figure out what works.
- Net Promoter Score: The NPS is more than simply a great loyalty statistic; it is also associated with higher business growth: don’t pass up this opportunity to drive your company forward. With an NPS of 75, Apple is a global benchmark.
- Net Retention: Monitor this indicator over time and strive for 100% or above. If you fail, don’t give up; instead, go deeper to uncover bottlenecks.
What is a KPI Dashboard for customer service?
A KPI dashboard is a place where managers may obtain real-time statistics, such as CSAT, resolution time, or effort score. Data is shown in graphs or charts and is constantly updated, allowing leaders to see how their team is performing.
A dashboard allows you to track how your team performs over time. And you can readily observe how performance is affected when you make new hires, update policies or procedures, or implement technology like AI.
Why are top customer service KPI metrics so difficult to attain?
Managing a customer service department is more difficult than ever. There are more channels to support, and more agents that are strained – and stressed – The following are the top 5 challenges affecting support team KPIs:
- Raise Customer Expectations
Meeting current customer expectations is becoming increasingly difficult; customers demand rapid, convenient, high-quality resolutions on their timetable. People want more, and despite many organisations’ efforts to improve assistance, whether through live chat or online wikis and customer self-service choices, more customers have experienced no change in customer service in the previous year.
- Juggling Conversations
Agents using digital channels such as live chat and social messaging are frequently carrying on many discussions at the same time due to the obligation to address problems as quickly as possible. This leads to distraction and mistakes.
- Silos of Information
Agents frequently need to access information from multiple back-end systems of record, such as CRM, order management systems, booking systems, knowledge base platforms, or logistical systems, in order to properly resolve tickets with personalisation and context. This increases the workload for agents, resulting in longer wait times and resolution times.
- Unavoidable Crises
When the COVID-19 epidemic swept the globe, customer service teams were confronted with increased traffic, changing rules, and new remote work settings. During this period, many businesses stopped measuring customer satisfaction because they were merely trying to respond to customers, frequently taking days. When a crisis strikes, it’s difficult to maintain the same level of service as before, especially when utilising a human-only team that is impacted by new work settings, external pressure, and stress, and can’t scale production when volume rises.
- Failure to Measure the Correct Customer Service KPI Goals
While this may seem obvious, you must first have the right systems in place to assess the business-critical KPIs before you can try to improve them. If you integrate various engagement platforms, ensure that all data is examined together to offer a complete view of how your support system is doing.
Conclusion
Now that you understand what a dashboard in customer service is and the ten most important indicators, you can provide your whole team with the information they need to operate at their best.
Good organisation is essential for providing a good level of customer service, and a dashboard allows you to keep updated with only a few clicks. You’ll be able to monitor improvements in productivity, customer satisfaction, first-call resolution rates, and more, and make changes as needed to improve performance over time.
