8 Most Important Customer Service KPIs and Metrics
Customer service KPIs and metrics are the best way businesses can track specific metrics that directly relate to customer satisfaction, issue resolution and the overall customer experience.
Customer support is an essential aspect of any business, as it directly impacts customer satisfaction and retention. Measuring customer service performance will be difficult without proper Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in place.
Customer service KPIs and metrics provide valuable insights into how well your team is meeting customer needs and resolving issues. It is crucial to leverage the right KPIs and metrics. These metrics provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your support team, allowing you to make data-driven decisions.
Let us explore the key customer support KPIs & metrics you should be measuring and how they can help you deliver exceptional service.
Table of Content
What is Customer Support KPI or Metric?
Customer service KPIs or metrics refer to measurements used to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of a company’s customer support processes. These indicators are crucial for monitoring and improving various aspects of customer service.
The service metrics provide insights into customer satisfaction, agent performance and overall customer service quality. It ensures that it aligns with organizational goals and meets or exceeds customer expectations.
Key objectives of customer service KPI are as follows:
- Provides actionable insights and enables data-driven decision-making to improve the help desk’s performance as well as customer satisfaction.
- Provides real-time data, allowing managers to monitor the efficiency of the support operations.
10 Customer Service KPIs and Metrics That Drive Your CX Team
Customer support KPI metrics help businesses monitor and analyze customer relations by considering their overall journey. When a business knows how to analyze customer data, it can get better insights into customer preferences and behavior.
Below is a list of important KPIs for customer service evaluation and acquiring actionable feedback.
Let us discuss the key metrics on how to measure customer service success with higher accuracy.
1. First Response Time
First response time (FRT) is all about how long it takes a customer service representative to respond to a support ticket once a customer submits it.
The customer service KPI indicates how well your agents can handle multiple tickets at once as well as their efficiency in managing fluctuating ticket volumes.
To calculate this metric, add all the time your support reps took to respond to tickets and divide that by the total number of tickets.
For example, let’s say employee A took 20 seconds to respond to a ticket, employee B took 15 seconds and employee C took 30 seconds. The first response time would be 65 seconds divided by three, or 21.67 seconds.
2. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Metrics
A great way to get an insight into the quality and experience you are providing to your customers is by asking them how they feel about your product/services. E.g.
Are your products living up to their expectations?
Is your support measuring up to their expectations?
Customer satisfaction metrics just help you do that. The CSM is a way to ask customer feedback on a scale of 1 to 10 and depending on the score you receive you can measure your performance.
Pro tips
- Communicate results: Share the results with relevant stakeholders in your organization, including management, customer support teams and product development teams.
- Benchmark against industry standards: Benchmark your metrics against industry standards to gain a broader perspective on customer satisfaction. It enables you to see how your business is performing and identify areas where you can excel.
3. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
NPS helps to understand the overall health of your customer service – How satisfied consumers are with your product/services and how likely they are going to recommend it to others?
NPS surveys can be sent across any communication platform like email, live chat messages, web pages, etc. NPS lets you collect customer feedback across customer journeys and helps to predict the next move your customer is likely to take.
How does NPS work?
You can find out your NPS with the help of the key question with an index on a scale from 1 to 10. “How likely is it that you would refer to the brand?”
Customer responses can be categorized into three categories:
- Promoters (9-10): They are your loyal customers who will continue buying from you and refer others with good word of mouth.
- Passives (7-8): Passives are your satisfied customers but are vulnerable to competitive offers and deals.
- Detractors (0-6): These are the unsatisfied or unhappy customers who negatively impact your brand through negative word of mouth.
How to calculate NPS score?
It is calculated by taking the percentage of promoters (9-10) out of the total respondents and subtracting it from the detractors (0-6).
Pro tips
- NPS surveys are only effective if you take action based on the feedback received. Use the insights gathered from NPS surveys to improve your products, services and customer experience. Address concerns raised by detractors promptly and prioritize initiatives that will elevate the experience for promoters.
- NPS alone may provide a high-level view of customer loyalty, but don’t stop there. Dive deeper into the data by segmenting respondents based on demographics or behavior to identify specific groups that require focused attention.
4. Customer Effort Score (CES)
Customer Effort Score (CES) is a customer experience metric that measures how easy it is for a customer to do business with you via a CES survey. The goal of CES is to create effortless experiences for your customers.
You can ask customers to evaluate their experience with your products and services.
The customers will rate you on a scale of 1-5 based on how much effort it takes to complete a transaction, resolve a support issue and otherwise interact with your company/product online or in person.
Pro tips
- CSAT tools show the average score, so you may lose your focus on customers who had a poor experience with your brand. Keep track of these customers and try to get their personalized feedback.
- Self-service support/ knowledge base metrics – Assess the performance of your self-help content. Almost 70% of your audience rely on self-help content to solve their queries.
- Ask for customer feedback: The simplest way to ask for customer feedback is to ask your customer whether the article was helpful or not.
5. Activation Rate
The activation rate support KRI is defined as “when a visitor or prospect takes a specific action to become an active user”.
Activation can be anything that includes customer interactions with your brand, such as time on a website, pages viewed, downloads, subscriptions, or even trial signups.
How to calculate the Activation Rate?
(#) of user sessions / (#) activities completed by users = (%) Activation Rate
Pro tips
- Simplify the steps involved in the activation process: Cut down the number of steps users have to take. For example, a one-step sign-up process can encourage users to try your product.
- Re-engage users: Good support drastically improves the activation rate. Segregate users who’ve recently signed up and provide them priority support.
6. Average Response Time (ART)
59% of customers are likely to buy when brands answer their queries in under a minute.
Getting connected to an agent immediately definitely helps to improve the customer experience.
Measure the average response time during a selected period and segment them based on low, medium and high priority. It will give you an insight into your agent’s actual performance and ensure you don’t lose on your valuable clients.
The total number of responses sent in that selected time period.
Average response time = Total time taken to respond during the selected time period/number of responses in the selected time period.
Pro tip
- Count average response time and segment it by channels. It clearly filters out the average response time of each of your channels and measures it against the industry standards.
7. First Contact Resolution Rate (FCR)
First Contact Resolution measures the percentage of customer issues resolved during the initial contact with the support team. It reflects the ability of customer service representatives to address client’s problems effectively without the need for additional follow-up or escalations.
First Contact Resolution Formula = (number of support issues resolved on first contact) / (total number of FCR-eligible support issues)
Pro tips
- List all the conversations that need multiple replies. A simple way to do it is to tag all first-time contact resolutions and filter them away from the list.
- Identify a problem or a technical issue that your customers invariably report. See if you can fix them in the first place.
8. Customer Churn
Customer churn rate is the percentage of customers who stop doing business with your company over time. There are several ways of calculating churn rate:
- Customer churn: The basic churn formula measures customers lost over a given period.
- Gross revenue churn: A formula that shows how customer churn affects revenue.
- Adjusted churn: This factors in customer acquisition to give a more accurate picture of churn for growing businesses.
- Seasonal churn: It’s the preferred churn calculation for seasonal businesses and other organizations with predictable highs as well as lows in demand.
To calculate the standard customer churn rate, divide the number of customers lost during a period by the total number of customers at the start.
Customer churn rate = (Customers lost during a period / Total number of customers at the start of a period) x 100
9.Agent Performance Metrics
The well-known customer service KPI measures the efficiency of the support team or agents in handling customer queries. Measuring the metric helps businesses identify high-performing agents, areas for improvement and training needs.
Agent utilization rate indicates the percentage of time the agent is busy taking up customer calls for support and providing effective resolution for their issues.
Pro tips
- The above formula is an inconsequential indicator of your actual agent utilization rate. To build a comprehensive agent utilization report, you should include the following metrics:
- The total number of times that interactions were received or initiated by an agent.
- The total number of interactions abandoned or rejected by the agent.
- The total number of times that customer interactions were redirected to another resource.
- The average handle time, the average amount of time that the agent spent handling interactions that the agent received.
- The total number of calls that took place in collaborative space.
10. Team Service Level Agreement (SLA) Metrics
An SLA helps you set a benchmark for your team so that you can fully optimize your current resources. It is a contract between your support team and customers to deliver services upon the agreed terms.
SLA mainly includes the measure of response and resolution time that your support team is supposed to deliver. Using SLA metrics you can highlight the tickets that fail to meet service level targets.
Pro tips
- Make customer satisfaction a part of your SLA. Set goals for customer satisfaction and measure them based on individual performance.
- Set specific performance goals based on ticket priority levels, like setting up a different resolution and response time for high-priority tickets.
- Set different SLAs for service desk teams and customers that pay for priority support.
Best Practices for Interpreting and Analyzing Customer Service Metrics
Interpreting and analyzing these metrics can be a complex task. Here are 10 best practices for interpreting and analyzing customer service metrics to help you navigate the process.
1. Identify the right metrics: Start by defining the key metrics that are most relevant to your business. These could include metrics like customer satisfaction scores, response time, resolution rate and customer retention.
2. Set benchmarks: Establish benchmarks for each metric to serve as a comparison point. These benchmarks can be based on industry standards, previous performance, or your competitors’ performance.
3. Use data visualization tools: Utilize data visualization tools to present your metrics in a clear and easily understandable way. Visualizations such as charts, graphs and dashboards can help you identify trends.
4. Compare metrics over time: Track your metrics over time to identify any changes. It will help you understand whether your customer service efforts are improving or declining.
5. Segment your data: Break down your metrics by different customer segments to gain deeper insights. Analyzing data at this level can help you target specific groups with tailored customer service initiatives.
6. Conduct root cause analysis: If you notice a decline in a specific metric, dig deeper to understand the underlying causes. Conduct root cause analysis to identify any underlying issues or trends that may be impacting customer service performance.
7. Seek customer feedback: Metrics alone may not provide a complete picture of customer satisfaction. Complement your data analysis with customer feedback, such as surveys or feedback forms, to gain qualitative insights and understand the “why” behind the numbers.
8. Collaborate with other departments: Customer service metrics can provide valuable insights to other departments such as product development or marketing. Collaborate with other teams to share your findings and contribute to overall business improvement.
9. Prioritize actionable metrics: Focus on support metrics that can directly drive action and improvement. For example, if your response time is consistently high, prioritize initiatives to reduce it and measure the impact on customer satisfaction.
10. Continuously monitor and iterate: Customer service KPIs & metrics should be seen as a continuous process of improvement. Monitor your metrics regularly and make adjustments as needed to ensure ongoing success.
Boost Your Support Efficiency by Using Right KPIs and Metrics
Measuring customer service with key performance indicators gives you real-time visibility on what’s going on in terms of your support operations. Customer service metrics not only help you score your agent’s performance but also help you to be sensitive towards customer service processes and implement strategies that scale your business.
Continuously monitoring and striving to improve these metrics can lead to streamlined support processes as well as a more effective support team. Whether you are a small business or a large organization, implementing a customer support metrics dashboard can streamline your support operations and enhance customer satisfaction.
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FAQs about Customer Support Metrics & KPIs
1. Why are customer support metrics and KPIs important?
Businesses can identify areas for improvement, measure the success of their customer service initiatives and make data-driven decisions by tracking customer support metrics and KPIs. These metrics help organizations understand their customers’ needs and enhance the overall customer experience, leading to increased customer satisfaction.
2. What are some common customer support metrics and KPIs?
Some common customer support metrics and KPIs include:
- Average response time: The average time it takes for a support agent to respond to a customer’s request.
- First response time: The time it takes for an agent to provide the initial response to a customer.
- Resolution rate: The percentage of customer issues that are successfully resolved.
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): A metric that measures customer satisfaction based on surveys or feedback.
3. How should I choose the right customer support metrics and KPIs for my business?
Choosing the right metrics and KPIs depends on your business goals and objectives. Start by identifying the key aspects of customer support that are important to your organization. It could be reducing response time, improving the resolution rate, or increasing customer satisfaction. Align your metrics and KPIs with these goals to ensure you are measuring what matters most to your business.
4. How often should I track customer support metrics and KPIs?
Regular tracking of customer support metrics and KPIs is essential to measure progress as well as make adjustments as needed. It is recommended to track these metrics on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. The frequency allows you to observe trends, identify issues and implement timely improvements.
5. What tools can I use to track customer support metrics and KPIs?
There are numerous tools available to help you track customer support metrics and KPIs. Some popular options include customer support software, help desk systems and CRM platforms. These tools often provide built-in reporting and analytics features to monitor your performance metrics.
6. How can you improve customer support metrics and KPIs?
Businesses can focus on various strategies to improve customer support metrics and KPIs. It may include streamlining communication channels, providing comprehensive training to support agents, implementing customer feedback mechanisms, establishing clear service-level agreements (SLAs) and continuously monitoring performance for actionable insights.
7. How often should you review customer support metrics and KPIs?
Regularly reviewing customer support metrics and KPIs is essential for maintaining high-quality customer service. The frequency of these reviews depends on the nature of your business and support operations. It is recommended to review metrics and KPIs on a monthly or quarterly basis to identify trends, set benchmarks and drive continuous improvement.
