5 Key Metrics that Customer-Centric Support Centers Need to Measure

Contact centers need to measure what matters rather than what moves. It is a well-known fact that customer influence is now at an all-time high. Contact centers can no longer rely on metrics such as Average Handle Time and Number of Calls Attended per Hour. Of course, such metrics might have been important until a few years ago, but now customer care has changed dramatically.

Today's customers demand quick and stellar service. A quick response is appreciated only when it is delivered in a personalized and professional manner. In addition, you have to carry out what you have promised to do.

That said, straight productivity measures such as AHT are still important. For example, these measurements can be used to identify training and workflow issues.

However, customer contact centers that understand the need to provide top notch customer service have shifted their focus to 5 far more effective metrics.

Service Level

Your contact center needs to be accessible. Accessibility problems will definitely frustrate customers and often determines the tone with which they interact with the customer care agent. The number one accessibility metric has always been and will always be Service Level (SL). It reveals the percentage of calls that were answered in a specific time span usually measured in seconds.

Service Level is a more accurate accessibility metric than the Average Speed of Answer (ASA). Since ASA is an average, managers may wrongly assume that customers have difficulty (or no difficulty) reaching an agent promptly. For example, ASA of 30 seconds doesn't necessarily mean that all callers had to wait 30 seconds to talk to the agent. Many calls were answered in much less time. Several callers had to wait much longer.

First-Call Resolution or FCR

FCR plays a huge role in determining customer satisfaction, costs and agent morale. Studies have revealed that customer satisfaction decreases by 35-45 percent when they have to make a second call for the exact same issue. However, accurately measuring FCR can be difficult. Contact centers ought to strive to measure this important metric as best as they could. They also need to equip agents with all the techniques and tools they need to improve FCR.

Contact quality and customer satisfaction

These two metrics are intrinsically connected and the most successful contact centers measure them properly. You cannot measure contact quality without incorporating the customer's perspective into the equation.

The best customer care organizations measure their agents' quality scores using a combination of customer ratings and internal compliance results gathered from the post-contact customer satisfaction surveys. This comprehensive approach allows the contact center to gain a more realistic view of Contact Quality. This will not be possible if only internal monitoring was used. What's more, this approach allows the contact center gather critical customer satisfaction data.

Employee Satisfaction or E-Sat

Those who ignore the importance of employee satisfaction as a vital metric may find it difficult to achieve customer satisfaction and cost containment. There is an important relation between agent satisfaction and their performance. If customer agents are unhappy with their work, you can’t expect them to make customers happy. Any failure to improve employee satisfaction will lead to bad customer experience and high employee attrition levels. Both factors can increase the costs for a contact center. Smart centers typically survey their staff through a surveying agency at least one or two times a year to find out whether they like their job.

Tech Support Teams – Can’t Live Without Them

You might think that “tech support” involves some lowly and dismal tasks. People in this department have to deal with irate, screaming voices. They’re sometimes aware of how a problem can be resolved, but cannot do so because they don’t have the required authority.

Tech support jobs are for the poor slobs without alternative job prospects, true? If you think so, you’ve got your tech support concepts upside down. You're overlooking important channels for sales, marketing, and product development.

Your company’s unexpected face

Most of us have been jarred by a person’s voice not matching his picture at some time. A similar thing can happen when rosy things depicted on your company website do not hold true. You keep your home page as your company’s public face. But do things stay in tandem when you actually start speaking?

Tech support is possibly the single human interaction most customers will have with you. Can you leave this task to the least paid, least-qualified and worst-treated employees?

Tech support generates sales

One tends to think the reason for having a tech support team is to answer questions and sort out confused people. But we feel that the objective of tech support is making customers do a fantastic job which involves your product.

This implies that you don't simply help them find a menu command–you try to figure out what they’re trying to achieve and assist them with it. You don't simply apologize for a missing feature – you suggest a workaround.

When you enable your customers, you’re not simply adding value to your product – you’re enhancing your entire company’s image. If you help your customer become awesome, he’ll pay you to stay awesome always. Now doesn’t that increase sales?

Good tech support - a pleasant surprise

Most people have negative things to say about tech support. When you want to know how fonts are changed, they ask you to restart the computer. If you want your billing address changed, you’re presented with three products you could buy. And other things like navigating complex menu options, waiting long periods and typing the same serial number multiple times.

A pizza supplier can earn bonus points if he delivers an unexpected free box of garlic bread with your pizza. Similarly, when tech support surprises a customer pleasantly with something additional which benefits him (not you) he’s going to be happy. He might post great tweets about your service, start following you on social platforms and encourage friends and followers to do so too.

Oh gosh! It looks like tech support has better social media outreach than your regular program of hiring interns to post gracious comments on blogs randomly. Does this surprise you?

It has been said that the best way to reach a customer’s heart is to under-promise and over-deliver. Most people don’t expect much from tech support anyway! Agreed super-fabulous tech support is great, but even merely acting like a human being puts you ahead. Answering an email with a support executive’s name at the end works better than sending an automated response.

Why give up such easy opportunities to make customers happy? Pleasant surprises are quite rare in business and if your company gets a reputation of giving them often, don’t you stand to gain?