The Right CX Metrics to Keep Your Teams on Track

Have you ever had a bad tasting dish that caused you an aversion from that food altogether? While you might know the food you don’t like, you probably don’t know the specific ingredient that ruined the taste of the whole dish. It becomes nearly impossible to figure out what caused that food aversion and might lead to additional issues in the future if unexplained.

To put this analogy into customer experience terms, a well-set plate of an exquisite looking dish cannot be credited as delectable if all ingredients do not compliment each other well. Even if only one of them tastes bad, the whole dish suffers and a customer will lose his appetite. Customer Support Teams are just like that. All the individual ingredients must be flavorful so that in the end a delicious dish could be presented.

Trying to figure out a specific issue might be very difficult, but don’t worry! There are several ways to assess the performance of each individual in your team. With the right CX Metrics and KPIs, you can detect where there is a need for improvement or which individual is putting in a complete effort and is dedicated to offering exceptional customer service. In addition, by using tools like journey maps, you can analyze and understand other customer pain points that need resolution.

However, before you get started, it’s important to understand which CX metrics are right for you. Check out this list of some of the most popular customer support metrics and select the ones that make the most sense for your business.

1. Average Resolution Time

One method of evaluating how well the customer service representatives are performing is to record the average time it takes for them to resolve a customer complaint permanently.

This is an accurate measure of productivity as this metric determines whether the agent is good at resolving customer complaints and can deal with them quicker rather than building on to the problem and dragging it for longer.

Just follow this formula to calcuate the Average Resolution Time (ART)

ART = (Total Reply Time) / (Total Number of Requests)

2. The volume of Requests Handled

First, you would want to know the total of some of the requests that were addressed to your agents in a given period. This way you can assess the workload and work performance of the organization itself. Seldom customers call to praise the product or service. More often they contact the agents to complain.

So, to appraise the performance of the customer service agents, you must keep a track of how many requests are correctly addressed and how productive your agents have been. The higher this number, the more efficient and diligent your agents will be.

While it is possible to calculate this without a CRM, using the right CRM system can make this calculation significantly easier.

3. Conversation Reply Speed

Ask yourself this question: after how long did my agent take to respond to the follow-up questions raised by the customer? The speed at which the customer service representative responds to any sequential concerns presented by the customer after the initial response determines the productivity and performance of the agent.

If you take too long to respond, the customer would get annoyed and probably leave a bad review or would no longer engage in business with you.

4. Requests escalated

Escalated requests are important for a couple of reasons.

Employee Training – This is an important metric that you keep a track of. If a request is escalated to a superior, then it means that the agent has failed to address the concerns of the customer. You may believe that this is the endpoint that every customer service agent should dread and avoid at all costs.

So, this metric precisely determines if a representative is good at his job or not. The higher the number of these requests, the more probable it is that the agent is not qualified or competent enough to cater to customers’ requests or needs.

Product Gap – multiple issues of the same type that get escalated often point to a product gap. In this case, the issue is not with the CSR but potentially with the sales or customer success function. Here, the customer was promised certain functionality and the product simply did not deliver.

Options here include retraining other departments or depending on the gap, working with the product team to understand what the client actually needs and coming up with a solution that works. The latter will definitely drive an increase in a clients customer experience.

5. Number of Complaints Regarding a Customer Service Representative

It is highly likely that a single individual is unable to entertain the concern of all customers. Some people are just not naturally drawn towards resolving customers’ issues and this can gravely affect their performance.

So, by evaluating this metric you can judge whether an individual is cut out for this job and is he/she able to address customers’ issues properly or not. We talked a bit about empathy in my round-up of the top CX posts in September and I’d urge you to read that post for more information and detail.

It is important to understand that a single complaint is sometimes not relevant. Rather, what leaders need to look for is a pattern of behavior.

6. Time Taken to Offer Initial Response

If you aim to offer the best customer service, you must keep a meticulous record of your initial response time. The higher this number goes, the more irritated the customers will get.

Representatives must be on their toes when it comes to addressing customers’ concerns. The customers must be instantly put through to the right person or the respective department, so they don’t have to wait unnecessarily. Measuring first call resolution is one of the most important KPIs for customer service teams.

7. Customer Service Rating

This metric is the best indicator of how well your individual customer rep’s performance has been. This number shows how the customers viewed and marked the performance of the agent.

This rating can be garnered by customer feedback, comments, or a star-rating. Companies generally use customer surveys to understand how customers perceive their teams. Another great indicator for companies that continues to gain in popularity is the NPS score.

8. Sales made after Contact

The objective of the customer service team should be to address customers’ concerns, so they are satisfied with the product or service and continue to increase the sales of the organization.

So, if the agents are performing well, or are providing related cross-sells or upsells of the product then the sales would increase, and more revenue will be generated. So, this metric takes effective customer service as a determinant that affects sales.

9. Rate of Successful Resolutions

This rate is a major defining factor in the performance of each customer service agent. This rate shows how well individuals have performed and how successful they have been in resolving customer complaints and issues.

Having an agent who doesn’t handle many requests but has a significantly high successful resolution rate is worth having in the team.

You can calculate it by employing the formula:

Resolution Rate= (Resolved requests) / (Support Requests)

Conclusion

You can only deliver exceptional customer service if you know exactly what your customers are expecting from you and you don’t have to be a mind-reader for that. Stay close to your customers and make them feel heard and valued. Just track the above-mentioned metrics periodically and this way you would be able to appraise the performance of your customer service agents and the experience offered to your customers.

About Author

Hutch Morzaria

I am an ITIL Expert and extremely passionate about customer service, customer experience, best practices and process improvement. I have led support, service, help desk and IT teams as well as quality and call center teams in Canada and the UK. I know how to motivate my teams to ensure that they are putting the customer first.

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