Customer Experience is at the crux of every business. Happy customers directly impact the success of a company. The customer support team plays a vital role in keeping customers happy. Unfortunately, while there are many ways through which customers can contact the support team, customers dislike contacting support.
As per a survey conducted by Statista, 60% of the customers are discouraged by the long hold times.
Irrespective of the kind of business, the customer support team has to improve their efficiency to feel happy and satisfied with their interaction. Therefore, it is essential to keep a close track of the customer support metrics to enhance the efficiency of the customer support team.
A recent study suggests that more than 59% customers are worried about repeating their issues to various departments where it gets transferred.
Therefore, customer support metrics are vital to solving many problems ranging from the team’s productivity to customer experiences.
Deciding on what to prioritize while choosing customer support metrics can be a bit overwhelming.
Customer support metrics help to monitor the team’s efficiency, track customer satisfaction, and track support tickets. First response time is the time taken for overall resolution, average ticket handling time, and a few other factors to consider while calculating customer support metrics.
Customers expect quick, convenient, and high-quality solutions.
More than 265 Billion customer requests get reported every year.
Monitoring analytics through all the channels, considering the CSAT scores, customer effort to contact the support team, and a few other surveys, helps improve customer service metrics.
For example, ticket volume, ticket backlog, average ticket handling time, average resolution time, average reply time, average first response time, CSAT score, and a few other customer support metrics helps to improve the team’s productivity and customer experience.
Top 5 customer support metrics that help to improve customer relationships
1 . CSAT Survey
CSAT survey is a mirror that shows companies how happy their customers are. Companies reach out to customers and get them to fill a form that includes various questions like asking them to rate their experience on a scale of 1- 10.
CSAT survey helps to quantify the Customer satisfaction metrics, which are otherwise qualitative. Customer support teams work hard to ensure customers are happy. The CSAT survey helps to understand both the efforts of the team and to measure the success rate.
CSAT calculation
CSAT % = Total Number of positive responses divided by the total number of responses.
Four to five rating is considered positive, three as a neutral, and two or one is negative when considering a CSAT survey response.
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Adding a field to track the channel through which they contacted the support team further helps identify the areas of improvement, making it the most effective way of calculating CSAT.
2. Average Resolution Time
The average resolution time is the time taken by the team to address a ticket from the time the customer raised it to the time of resolution. Long resolution times result in unhappy customers and creates the challenge of lower customer retention.
While the average resolution time varies from one company to another, it would be a good idea to compare your company’s average resolution time to that of the others in the industry.
A higher average time generally means either the team is inefficient or is overworked. A talk with the team to understand the challenges they may face and offer appropriate tools/ training to fix it will help speed up the ticket resolution process.
A quick look at the average resolution time by individual team members will help throw some light on their performance. In addition, it is an excellent way of understanding the challenges that any of the team members may be facing.
Calculation of average resolution time
Average Resolution time = Total resolution time for all resolved tickets divided by the number of resolved tickets.
It would be great to check the average resolution time to ensure a good customer experience. However, a steady increase indicates a training need of the team to handle the complex customer issues coming their way.
3. First Response Time
The time taken to respond to the query for the first time after the customer has raised the ticket is the first response time. The first response time is dependent on the efficiency of the customer support team.
Long waiting time on the customer support calls and taking a long time to respond often results in losing customers and a terrible customer experience. When a customer is facing trouble and looking for someone to fix it, the customer support team replies fast and puts them at ease, thereby creating trust in the brand and a great customer experience.
Tracking the first response time for a customer support rep and the average across a team is possible with customer support metrics. Tracking the first response time across the team helps to understand the training needs of the team.
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While twelve hours is termed an excellent first response time for emails, it is two hours or less for social media and less than an hour for live chat. 75% of customers expect a response in 5 minutes. The average is 12h 10 min.
Calculation of the first response time
Average first response time = Sum of the first response times divided by the total number of tickets.
Customer support metrics help to calculate the difference between the request time by the customer and the first time the customer support team sent the response.
4. Volume of tickets
The total number of support tickets received in a given time is called the volume of tickets. Tracking the volume of tickets is essential to plan workload, determine time frames, and identify gaps.
Engagement with customers through any means of communication ranging from a support ticket to a Facebook message counts as a part of the entire conversation.
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Tracking the volume of the tickets helps to identify the time of the week/day when the highest amount of tickets are received. Shift plans, distribution of workload, and improved response efficiency are a few benefits of tracking the volume of tickets.
Tracking the customer support metrics for ticket volumes enables to improve the customer experience.
Ticket volume calculation
Total ticketing volume = Sum of all the tickets received.
Summing up, the total number of tickets received in a given time frame is the volume of tickets.
5.Ticketing backlogs
The total number of unresolved tickets in the queue at the end of a given time can be called ticketing backlogs. A ticket backlog means a string of unhappy customers.
Calculation of Ticketing Backlogs
Ticket backlogs = Sum of open Tickets.
It is also vital to check the total ticket volume to understand the percentage of unresolved tickets at the end of the week. A higher rate of backlogs repeatedly means a need to expand the support team.
Conclusion
Customer support metrics play a vital role in improving the performance of a business. Whether it is the CSAT, first response, or an average response time calculated, it enables businesses to make data-driven decisions.
Customer support metrics help companies identify the training needs, load balancing, shift assignment, and KPI for the customer support team. Current open tickets, call abandonment rate, and recent calls waiting are a few other metrics that companies can track to ensure a great customer experience.
