Any business that wants to accurately measure growth uses KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators. Setting KPIs for a period of time and then measuring if they were met is a basic HR practice these days. They become even more important when we discuss the success of customer service. Setting clear and measurable KPI’s for a customer service team is vital, but what should your KPIs look like?
In this blog we will explore what today’s KPIs look like and why your business needs to track them going forward.
Why Track KPIs?
While there is no exact set of KPIs to follow, they are extremely useful for your enterprise and your customers, whatever combination of KPIs you decide to choose. These metrics are helpful in any industry, but especially when it is customer focused. When a business sets out to improve its customer services, it’s imperative that it does so in a way that is measurable, and KPIs achieve that.
CSAT
A Customer Satisfaction Score (or CSAT) is one of the most common and widely regarded KPIs because it indicates the level of customer satisfaction. The score relies on customer feedback to measure how a customer feels about whatever your business does for them.
Generally, a business will measure its CSAT by asking straightforward questions to customers that gets them to rank their experience on a numbered scale. Depending on each customer’s numbered response, it will then dictate what actions to take next. A low scored response will provide an opportunity for a business to gather why the customer was unsatisfied, what specifically went wrong, and how they can stop future occurrences.
A method of calculating this score could be to:
- No. of customers who responded as satisfied / No. of total customers surveyed x 100. This would give you a total percentage of satisfied customers.
ESAT
Along with customer satisfaction comes employee satisfaction, it’s the flip side of CSAT. The more satisfied an employee is with their role in the company, the more they will be able to provide customers with first-rate and helpful service.
A good Employee Satisfaction Score can be derived from doing regular employee surveys, managers performing regular check-ins and reviews with staff and keeping an open dialogue.
The financial implications of this KPI can be huge too. A high ESAT means better employee retention and less money devoted to recruiting.
Average Abandonment Rate
Longer wait times for customers often end in them abandoning a conversation out of frustration. Customers often seek quick attention due to an important question they have as they are already anxious, and even angry. The wait time only adds to this. When abandonment rate increases for your business, so does customer dissatisfaction. Customers at this point often consider taking their business elsewhere, which is a bad sign. Lower abandonment rates means higher customer satisfaction, it’s that simple.
This KPI can be found by averaging out wait times that should be easy to find from your call log data.
Average Resolution Time
Quick resolution to a customer’s issue is always a common factor for determining customer satisfaction. Customers expect it, and customer service teams want to provide it – a fast resolution is a win-win scenario.
The KPI of Average resolution time (ART) is determined by the total time taken by a customer service team to resolve an issue upon receiving it. The lower the time frame, the better the score.
CES
A Customer Effort Score (CES) determines the difficulty of a customer’s effort to have a problem fixed. A CES depends on aspects such as time devoted to a problem, the number of interactions and the number of times a customer makes contact.
A simple way of determining this KPI is to conduct a short survey after a customer makes contact regarding an issue. Using a scale ranging from ‘very easy’ to ‘very difficult’ (for example) can determine just how challenging that customer found their interaction with a customer service team member. If you receive numerous low scores, or ‘very difficult’ type responses, then there’s an obvious problem on your business’ end.
Customer Lifetime Value
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is derived from the projected revenue one customer generates for a business during their time as a customer.
To get this score, multiply the average sale price to a customer by the average number of times that customer makes a purchase in a month. Then divide that figure by the Monthly Customer Churn Rate.
The old business adage is that it is generally more affordable to retain existing customers than find new ones. This is why nurturing your relationship with current customers by enhancing their experiences are crucial to increasing your revenue.
To summarize, KPIs have a number of positive aspects for a business including:
- They monitor the overall ‘health’ of your business
- They measure employee progress
- They identify good and bad patterns
- They identify what needs to change and,
- They guide businesses toward growth.
Therefore, KPIs are an important metric in any industry, but especially customer focused ones. And while no set combination of KPIs exists for guaranteed success, using some is better than none!