Customer service is the lifeblood of any business. It determines how is your business in the eyes of the general public. So, it is worthy enough to measure the customer service KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and metrics. Providing positive experience can aid your business growth. Excellent customer support is equal to be featured in Forbes magazine. So, you should never underestimate customer service. Hence, it is essential that your major strategies should focus on how to measure customer service satisfaction and deliver a great experience. “It costs whole life to build a reputation, but just a moment to ruin it”. This quote clearly means that keeping customer happy and satisfied should always be your goal. “Customer is always the king”. It is your prime duty to keep your customers happy. Every customer support team uses a strategy or some kind of tool to serve the customers. So, measuring the key performance indicators (KPIs) will help to understand the customer in the better way. This article is all about the important KPIs and metrics you should definitely consider measuring them. Let’s get into them, without wasting much time.
Importance of measuring Customer KPIs and Metrics:
Customer support metrics helps you to know the right metrics because they act as the real reflection of how the business interacts with the customers. You might think that the service given by you is the best, but there might be a chance of your customers not thinking in that way. Hence, when you have customer service KPIs and metrics that will allow you to take better decisions in the basis of the metrics available and will strive to improve the gaps to achieve complete success in the following three areas.
- Measure Team Performance:
Customer service KPIs and metrics measure how well is your customer support team is handling the requests. It makes you to take the right decisions based on the grey areas of your team and aids in making plans and scheduling training sessions to achieve customer service benchmarks.
- Boost customer satisfaction:
Customer satisfaction clearly determines how satisfied is your customers from your service. The higher satisfaction score will directly corelate to the higher customer lifetime value (CLV).
- Increase Customer retention:
Measuring customer service constantly will give you insights about the customer satisfaction scores. Dedicating your efforts and time to align the products and services to keep your customers happy will not only make them to retain in your business for a longer period of time, but also will make them your brand advocates.
Important Customer service KPIs and metrics you should measure
- First Response Time (FRT):
There is a higher chance of your customers leaving your company if there us delay in the response time. A research says that 59% of customers are likely to buy your brand, if their queries are attended within a minute. So, getting connected with an agent will help in improving the customer experience.Average first response time refers to the time taken between the customer and the agents to answer to their queries.
The Importance of FRT being one of the customer support metrics:
- It prioritizes the customer that their issues are looked into properly.
- The service metric clearly showcase the alertness of your team’s issue addressing.
- This KPI aids you to learn whether your team is sufficient enough to handle or requires more resources.
2. Customer Retention Rate:
Acquiring new customers is much expensive than retaining the old one. A research says that 80% of the future profits comes from the 20% of the existing customers. Higher CRR clearly defines the higher customer service you are providing to the customers.Customer Retention Rate = ((CE – CN) / CS)) x 100 where,
- CE= No. of customers at the end of the process
- CN= No. of new customers acquired during the process.
- CS= No. of customers at the beginning of the process.
3. Customer Satisfaction Score:
CSAT or customer satisfaction score otherwise known as happy customer key performance indicator (KPI) helps to evaluate the client’s service satisfaction with your business, products, or services. Measuring customer satisfaction will help you to know the exact truth about your brand in the perspective of the customers.You can ask your customers directly to rate their customer service or provide feedback in the form of survey.
Your CSAT can include the regular numbers like stars, smiley faces, etc…
4. First Contact Resolution:
First contact resolution (FCR) helps gauge customer satisfaction, the higher your FCR rate, the more satisfied your customers tend to be. It is a key factor that drives customer loyalty and also measures your agents’ efficiency to resolve an issue on the first interaction.The FCR performance indicator gives you insights on how good your agents are at understanding and addressing a problem without needing multiple interactions.
5. Average Resolution Time (ART):
Fast resolution is always a stable determinant for customer satisfaction. Every customer expects quick consistent support experience. Addressing customer’s queries in real time is imperative for you to hold them from leaving you at the risk. Average resolution time (ART) refers to the total time taken by the team to resolve the support ticket once it is looked upon. It is measured in days or online hours. The lower the resolution time, the higher is the customer satisfaction.
6. Cost per Conversation:
Finding out the percentage of customer support costs of your total revenue is one of the most important customer service key performance indicators (KPI). When you compare the support costs in terms of your revenue it helps you to evaluate how much your service efforts represent compared to your total revenue. Every business focuses on delivering the highest quality customer service at minimal costs, so it is essential to track the below components
- Resources – in terms of salary costs
- Infrastructure costs
- Training and managing the team
7. Average Conversion Rate:
The average conversion rate refers to the number of visitors who have completed their actions successfully on your website. The higher the conversion rate, the more successful are your campaigns for business growth.
Conversion rate = (Conversions / Total visitors) * 100%
Customer service is more about the customers than about measuring the metrics. You can transform your business; you’ve never imagined with a good customer service. Customers are so powerful that, they can even make or break the company. So, giving them the best customer service should be your prime concern.