The New Year's Resolution All Support Organizations Should Consider

With so many technologies and channels as part of the ever-changing customer support ecosystem, the list of metrics used to measure the success of support organizations is constantly growing. All the possibilities make it difficult for managers to know which ones actually matter and where to focus. As the new year approaches, it’s the perfect opportunity to step back, take a look at your department’s support metrics, and make the proper adjustments. Here are some to consider:

1. Customers are more than a Net Promoter Score:

Typically, you measure Customer Experience based on Net Promoter or CSAT scores, whether this is directly after an interaction or periodically throughout the year. As companies focus more on CX and how customers are interacting with a product, there’s been a rise in Customer Effort scores – which measures the ease of an interaction by asking the customer how much effort was required to use the service, on a 5-point scale from “very difficult” to “very easy.” This has been shown to have a tighter correlation to a customer’s relationship and a better indicator of their loyalty.

2. Measure volume beyond the phone call:

Departments tend to do a great job at looking at volume metrics for phone calls. The number of inbound calls by time period and by product have implications on the staffing of different levels of support agents, the hold times, and abandoned call rates. But support is now an omni-channel operation, with more customers preferring to move away from a phone call and into. Measuring volume beyond the phone calls and into email, chat, self-service case creation, and embedded diagnostics are a more accurate representation of volume and will help prioritize staffing, budgeting, and season operations.

3. Productivity in the new-age of support tools:

Improving the productivity of agents is always a priority for managers, especially when considering tools like remote support. With technological advancements of these tools, as well as more contact channels for customers, look further than traditional metrics such as First Contact Resolution and average resolution time, and into a more omnichannel view, especially with chat metrics. Now, agents can run concurrent chat sessions, so it’s worth looking at the average concurrent chat number. In collaborative support environments, measuring a Collaboration Effort Score for agents will give a sense of how that model is working for your organization.

4. Employee Satisfaction as a Financial Metric:

There is a cost to attracting, training, and retaining your employees that staff your support center and ultimately has an impact on the performance. Instead of just looking at the average cost of incidents, maintenance revenue, and the gross margin of support services, consider measuring employee satisfaction and their engagement score as part of your analysis. Having a happier, more stable agent population will mean that your organization is as efficient as possible and is best serving the needs of your customers.

So, in the season of New Years’ resolutions, consider a renewed approach to measuring the ROI of your support organization with metrics that more accurately reflect today’s support center.

For more recommendations on new metrics to consider, as well as industry benchmarks, view our recorded webinar hosted with TSIA: “Service and Support Metrics That Matter”.