Organizations deal with metrics all the time. Entrepreneurs want to hit particular revenue targets, startups hoping to eventually reach a certain amount of monthly active users, and marketers hoping to reach a specific amount of eyeballs and get a specific amount of clicks. But what about metrics for customer service?
It’s much easier to think of concrete numbers when dealing with metrics like revenue or profit. It can be much more difficult to “measure” customer service or customer satisfaction. However, some KPIs — key performance indicators — can help you understand whether you are making progress.
Average Resolution Time
This KPI is exceptionally straightforward: the “average resolution time” refers to the median amount of time that it takes to resolve a customer issue COMPLETELY. This metric is also called the Mean Time To Resolution, or MTTR. Some customer support issues will take longer than others because they may be more complex, but customer support teams should always be working to lower their average resolution time.
If it takes over 24 hours to resolve minor issues with your customers; your customer service associates might not perform as they should. While no business can expect to solve issues immediately, lowering your average resolution time is a sure sign that your customer service is improving.
First Contact Resolution
What does the ideal customer service experience look like? Customers never like having to deal with multiple customer support agents on the phone or having to email back and forth dozens of times until their issue is resolved. That’s why first contact resolution is an excellent KPI for business owners to gauge customer service success.
Your company should always be putting its best foot forward, but that first interaction is crucial for customer sentiment. Your first contact resolution rate, or FCR rate, refers to the percentage of calls or requests where issues are dealt with during the FIRST interaction with a customer service representative.
It usually means that the representative completely understood the issue and resolved it as soon as possible. If your FCR rates are low or are falling — it could signify an underlying issue with how your customer service employees are communicating to customers.
The Ticket Backlog
Let’s say that you are an entrepreneur with a growing business that can finally sell thousands of products per month. You have also hired customer service representatives to help deal with the newfound demand, but you notice that the ticket backlog only continues to grow larger.
Lingering tickets are often some of the most complex customer issues, but an organization should always be working to reduce ticket backlog. A customer will be much more upset if it takes two weeks to deal with a particular issue rather than two days.
A growing customer backlog guarantees only one thing: many irate customers will be frustrated that it took this long to speak or interact with a customer service representative. If you continue to monitor and address this customer backlog, it can help keep customer satisfaction higher. If not, it can eventually affect your company’s reputation.
