The customer service KPI’s is one of the first things to report on when it comes to considering how things are going from a customer support team perspective. Unfortunately, many organisations focus on just one customer service metric and don’t think of the important aspects that also underline how that metric came about. By reporting on a just a single KPI it only tells a small part of the story of your customer support team’s performance, productivity, and customer satisfaction.
Agent behaviour
Another way of looking at things when deciding what KPI’s you look at is that if agents know what you are looking for, their behaviour will tend to sway in the direction of satisfying those KPI’s rather than what is for the best for your customers. For example, if you only measure tickets solved or handle time, then agents will likely strive to solve tickets as quickly as possible, and quality may suffer. If you only measure customer satisfaction (CSAT), they may go past the point of diminishing returns in the amount of time they spend on each ticket. To combat these tendency’s, it is worth choosing a set of customer support statistics that balance competing behaviours so that you can get a balance between the customer and agent experience that you strive for.
Key KPI to measure
Occupancy: This will keep track of the agent’s time spent throughout the day on tasks that are expected of them within the organisation.
Productivity: Although the specific definition will change in different organisations it in the end comes down to how many tasks are performed in a certain measurable time frame. Whether that is tickets solved per hour or phone calls followed up on throughout the day.
Solving timing: This is where the average time taken to solve tickets comes under report.
Customer Service: finally, this is where feedback from customers is key, there is little benefit in solving tickets as fast as possible and having your agents keeping the other KPI stats exceptionally high when the customer satisfaction is suffering. This can be measured by customer satisfaction surveys, timing they were first responded to and how they felt with the whole experience.
To get a good balance, as previously stated, you need to find a good balance between sets of KPI focus points. By only looking at occupancy for example you lose the view on whether they are spending their time doing what is expected productively. On the other side of things if only productivity is examined, what is the quality of the work or is their total available time being maximised?
Above is certainly a good place to start when looking for a balance but undoubtedly if you want a more in depth view of your performance you can dig deeper into your data.
It is also worth highlighting that the key component to considering KPI’s is to have the right software that allows for extensive reporting of your data. None of the above would be possible without the reporting tools so it is worth keeping that in mind should you be thinking of what software to use. Although the software is an important part, certain processes need to be put in place to ensure the right data is being gathered and stored to allows these reports to show a true light on your customer service.
For a software that can support all your KPI reporting needs have a look at NetHelpDesk with a free trial here
