How do you know if your customer service is living up to customer expectations? The answer is in KPIs, or key performance indicators.
There are plenty of different KPIs you can use to measure customer service and the success of your business’s customer service strategy. Different ones will make more sense for different types of businesses. Below is a list of different KPIs your business might consider using to measure customer service.
Overall Satisfaction
By performing regular customer satisfaction surveys, you can gauge how many of your customers would rate their level of satisfaction as very or extremely satisfied. The more customers who rate their experiences highly, the better your customer service.
Satisfaction Improvement
One way to measure customer service is to track changes in customer satisfaction over time. If, for example, satisfaction has gone down over the last couple of years, then you’ll know a change is likely in order. But if it’s improving, or if you’ve already achieved high levels of customer satisfaction and they’re staying constant, then you’ll know you’re on the right track.
Customer Retention
Customers who are happy with the service you provide are likely to stick around and do more business with you. So if you’re bringing back a fair amount of customers regularly, that’s a pretty good indication that you’re providing good customer service.
Net Promoter Score
And customers who are very happy with your customer service are likely to even go a step further and recommend your company to others. So your company’s Net Promoter Score, or rate of people who would recommend your business to others, can be a good indication of where your customer service stands and another way to measure customer service.
Conversion Rate
After someone from your customer service team interacts with a customer, how likely are they to make a purchase or take some other kind of action? If your customer service is good, this number should be fairly high.
Compared to Competitors
Even customers who like your brand might not choose you over your competitors for every single interaction or purchase. So while general satisfaction and customer retention are good metrics to measure service, it’s still important to see how your company stacks up against competitors.
Average Resolution Time
Part of providing great customer service is resolving issues in a timely manner. If you can respond to customers and get them answers quickly, they’re more likely to be pleased with the experience. So, if you’re able to keep that resolution time relatively low, that could be an indication of good customer service and yet another way to measure customer service.
Active Issues
If you are able to resolve most issues fairly quickly, then you shouldn’t have too many issues to deal with at any one time. And if you do, then it could indicate that your customers have a higher-than-usual volume of complaints.
Resolved Issues
You can also look at all of the issues that your customer service team has resolved to get an idea of your customer service. No matter how great your company, there are bound to be issues and complaints. But if you’re able to solve them quickly and in a way that makes your customers happy, that’s an indication of good service.
Employee Productivity
Different types of businesses use different methods to measure employee productivity. But it’s an important factor when it comes to customer service. If you want customer issues to be resolved in a timely manner, employees need to do their jobs effectively.
Employee Retention/Employee Turnover
When your employees are happy, they tend to stick around. And when you are able to keep employees around for long periods of time, they’re more likely to feel comfortable and empowered in their jobs. This means they’re also likely to provide service that lives up to your standards.
Brand Attributes
How do customers view your company overall? What words would they use to describe your brand? And how do their opinions line up with your expectations? By obtaining this sort of feedback from customers, you can measure customer service and get a pretty good indication of where you stand in your customers’ eyes. And you’ll know what qualities you might need to work on to get customers to see your brand in that particular light.
Complaint Escalation Rate
No matter how great your service is, you’re going to get complaints at some point. But if you reach a point where you’re receiving an unusually large number of complaints, or your complaints have been steadily increasing without overall customer growth, there could be a problem. Keep an eye on how those numbers change over time. This could also tie in to the number of resolved issues, if you’re tracking that, as well.
Cash Flow
Cash flow can be a great performance indicator for many different business factors. Customer service is such an important factor that it can have a really big impact on your bottom line. If your service is bad, it could drive customers away, decrease referrals and cause potential customers not to complete purchases. But if it’s good, customers are likely to come back, tell their friends and have a big impact on your company’s overall profits.
Customer Service Photo via Shutterstock