We live in a world and age where large corporations and multinationals are fighting to keep their customers happy and engaged. In order to accomplish their goals and increase their customers’ satisfaction, these companies strive to provide top-notch customer service. They use a wide variety of KPI (key performance indicators) in order to quantify and measure the performance of their customer service department.

Every single customer service organization is unique. While some corporations and small businesses compete on cost, where productivity and efficiency are the most important criteria, others compete on customer experience, where customer satisfaction is of paramount importance. Even so, there are a few effective KPIs for customer service that are standard for all businesses.

Top Customer Service KPIs 

Measuring customer service is obviously not an easy task. However, by using certain KPIs you can get an unfair advantage over your competition and make your customers fall in love with you. Regardless of the size of your business, the following KPIs can help you stand out of the crowd by providing exceptional customer service.

1. CSR Quality Rating

This is a customer service KPI which measures the competence of your employees and their ability to provide a solution to the customers’ requests. A good study that reveals the huge benefits of having a good CSR quality rating score can be found here: http://nbs.net/knowledge/returns-on-csr-require-quality-and-innovation/

2. Customer Satisfaction Score

Customers are the lifeblood of any organization. If your customers are happy, they will bring other potential clients eager to try your products or services. On the other hand, if they are unsatisfied with your customer service department, they will more than likely go to your competition. It is a proven fact that outstanding organizations keep a constant pulse of their CSAT (customer satisfaction) score.

This is probably the best KPI indicator you have at your disposal. By simply giving an ample survey after your customers have completed their experience with the customer service team, you can extract critical information and knowledge that will allow you to strengthen your organization and exceed your customers’ needs.

3. Average Wait Time

For online chat and phone support, this metric is of paramount importance. We live in a fast-paced world where people are extremely busy, so waiting even 5 minutes in line is quite long for many of us. It is important that the average waiting time to be somewhere between 1 and 2 minutes. For email support, the average waiting time should be less than one day.

4. Abandoned Calls

Another important metric that measures the percentage of calls which remain unanswered or get disconnected before they reach a customer service representative. If this number is high, you should hire more customer service representatives and give your employees additional bonuses for working overtime.

5. Response Time by First Reply

Many customers are complaining that, even if they talk to a customer service representative and he takes note of the problem, nobody calls them back if the issue is not resolved. If an issue in not taken care of in the first response, the CSR team has to call the customer back and let him know that it will take a while until the problem will be solved. Over time, as your company becomes more and more efficient, this key performance indicator should continue to trend down.

6. Customers Emails not Replied

Another KPI that should be on a downward trend is the total number of emails that haven’t been replied. Sometimes your email CSR team cannot cope with the influx of emails, so some of these emails slip unnoticed. The number of customers emails not replied has to be as low as possible, especially if you want to have an impact in your niche.

7. Engagement Demonstrated by the CSR Staff

When gathering feedback, it is imperative to find out if whether your employees have been engaging and were interested in helping your customers. This KPI is very important, because it shows you which of your employees is motivated to help customers. After you find out who those demotivated employees are, you should try to offer them extra rewards and try to energize them in order to motivate them.

8. Average Call Length

The average length of each call has to be included in this list of effective KPIs for customer service. If your CSR staffs spend an average of more than 3 minutes per call, that is a sign that they are distracted. Many employees have the bad habit of putting the call on hold and do other activities, while the customer is waiting on the other side of the line. Do not let your employees dictate the pace of your company’s growth, but let them know that customer satisfaction is huge for you.

 

The Bottom Line 

All these KPIs for customer service are extremely valuable, helping you measure the effectiveness of your endeavors and the impact you have on your customers. Use these key performance indicators in your advantage and you will definitely make your customers very happy.