Essential metrics for the service operation

- There are many variables in customer service and there are almost always different perspectives of what's important. What should you focus on? Let's explore answers to that question here. Now first, just a note. You're ultimately going to need to establish measures and objectives that are right for your organization. Cookie cutter approaches don't work. Even among organizations rated highly for customer service tend to emphasize different KPIs. For example, Amazon.com focuses on how many issues can be resolved through self-service. While Nordstrom puts more emphasis on personal service. The good news is we've found there are seven key aspects of service that should always be reflected in metrics. They build on each other and form a powerful framework for determining the metrics that makes sense. Here I'm referring to metrics for the operation as a whole, not for individual employees. Let me introduce each here. The first is anticipating customer needs or the workload forecast. If you don't have an accurate prediction of how many customers you'll be serving and what their needs will likely be it's going to be very difficult to deliver effective service. That's true for any kind of operation from a small grocery store to a busy restaurant to a large multi-site, technical support center. So a good supporting metric would be tracking variance of forecast and actual. How many customers did you expect? And get as specific as you need. How many customers do you expect to order the pasta special this Friday and Saturday? Forecasts are never perfect. But this is a key enabler to delivering effective service. The next key aspect of customer service is related it's the other side of the equation. You've anticipated workload now it's important to anticipate the staff and other resources required to handle it. Let's say you manage an emergency department in a hospital. It's essential you have the right number of physicians and nurses and support staff in place at the right time. The supporting metric is the variance of actual to planned schedules. Did you have the right skills in place at the right times? The next aspect to customer service is wait times or how accessible you are. In different terms, this is service level or response time, or use the different settings. Accessibility is really an outcome the first few aspects of customer service predicting workloads and getting the right resources in place at the right times. Supporting metrics here are customer wait times. And they apply to any access alternative customers have whether they call or walk in and/or use other alternatives. Next is the quality of interactions and this, along with wait times is probably what most of us are thinking of when we refer to customer service. What actually happens at the point of service delivery. Things like understanding the customers need. Resolving the issue. Accurately entering data. Other aspects of quality report. Both input from customer surveys and internal quality scores are samples of customer service interactions can be used to support the metrics. The next essential area of delivering service is employee engagement. And by engagement, I mean to agree to what your employees (mumbling) and the work they do. Studies resoundingly show that engaged employees provide better service. You can measure that through engagement surveys, and scores and in things like turnover. Customer satisfaction and loyalty is, of course, a key reflection of effective customer service. Ideally, you want customers to be so happy with your services that they're ambassadors for your brand. The supporting metric can be a net promoter score, a customer effort score, or similar. And you can also measure repeat business, market share, reviews they post about your organization and products. Finally, a high leverage high value aspect of customer service is strategic value. The contribution your service operation makes to the broader organization. Every day customer facing services have visibility of the organizations products, and services, and processes. Capital One uses customer input to tailor financial products. And Apple and Power service representatives listen for, and share innovation ideas. Supporting metrics are generally samples of the innovations and improvements that come from this effort. Customer service can be powerful in the eyes and the ears for innovation if you have the metrics to support these efforts. The healthiest organizations, those with the most effective customer service have metrics that reflect all seven of these aspects of service delivery. I find in many organizations that two or three sometimes even more of these areas are underrepresented, perhaps missing altogether. So these would be areas of opportunity. In the exercise files there's a worksheet that summarizes each of these aspects of customer service. And example metrics that support them. As you take inventory, think through these questions. How well is your organization performing in each of these areas? Do you have effective metrics for each area? Are they getting the visibility and attention they deserve?