How to define KPIs for your company’s customer service

define kpi customer service

When you have a company, you obviously have to look for performance. To monitor these performances against the objectives set, companies use KPIs. These key indicators are used in particular to have a clear view of the performance of the company, or a part of the company. 
Whenever you are looking for performance in one of your company’s business areas, or in one of the areas provided, you can use KPIs
Of course, customer service is no exception to this rule, since it must be part of the services optimized for customer satisfaction. However, it may be difficult to highlight some data rather than others. It is therefore necessary to prioritize in order to have the most global view possible of performance. So, which KPIs to choose for your customer service follow-up, and how to choose them?

How to choose KPIs for your company’s customer service?

To choose efficient KPIs, i.e. efficient for monitoring customer service activity, it is first of all necessary to take into account the stakeholders. Who is concerned about customer service? You, or the person in charge of it and, more importantly, the client. Thus, it is a good idea to choose an indicator that helps to understand customer satisfaction. 
This satisfaction can also be measured by the customer’s desire to recommend you to others. 
As mentioned above, the client is not the only person involved in the service. The person in charge of answering the different questions and answering the problems can also be evaluated. 
When the client’s use of your support service is over, it means that the question has been answered, or that the problem has been solved. If possible, make sure to track this customer, to find out if they come back to your site to consume. 

Which KPIs can you choose?

CSAT

Obviously, the first KPI to highlight is the customer satisfaction score (CSAT). This indicator is the most popular and efficient way to measure your customer service. 
To assess overall customer satisfaction, you only need to propose a short questionnaire at the end of the exchange, as many companies already do. To do this, you can propose a simple and fun questionnaire, while keeping it short, so that the customer can fill it out very quickly. 

NPS

As mentioned above, customer satisfaction can also be measured by their ability to recommend you after their experience with your company. This measure is called the Net Promoter Score. It consists of sending a questionnaire, again. 
Like the other questionnaire, it can be sent as soon as the exchange between the person in charge of customer service and the consumer has been completed. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is generally offered with a score out of 10, allowing you to have a precise scale of the client’s intentions to recommend you, or not. The NPS often contains questions such as “How likely are you to recommend us?” or “Would you recommend us to someone else?”

Read more about NPS and its benefits for your business in the “The Definitive Guide to NPS” article.

 

First/Average response time

The response time of your customer relationship managers also counts. Indeed, if they do not respond quickly enough to consumer requests, consumers will get impatient and have a negative experience in mind when they think of your online store. 
Two solutions are therefore available to you, you can either use the First response time, thus calculating the time taken by the employee to reply to the first message, and the average response time, which is calculated on the entire conversation. 

First call resolution

As with average response time, problem resolution is important to the customer. That is why this data must also be important for you and your company. Indeed, it will be enough for you to count the number of problems that have been solved on the first call, thus showing the effectiveness of your agents. 

Customer retention rate

When you deal with traffic and users on an E-Commerce, there are two areas that you have to deal with: acquisition, and conversion. 
When you have customer feedback on your support, it is good to know if it is coming back, or not. Indeed, as mentioned above, the experience must be positive. So, if it is positive, the customer will be more likely to come back to you. 

Conclusion

Customer satisfaction is very important for the good health of your online store. Indeed, the cost of acquiring a new one is higher than the cost of retaining a consumer already on your platform. That’s why a satisfied customer is good, but a dissatisfied customer who finds answers to his questions and problems is perfect. So make sure that despite the hiccups they may encounter, they come back to your online store.
And you? Which KPIs are you trying to highlight? Are we missing any? Feel free to tell us in comments or on our social networks. 

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ECN Team
E-Commerce Nation is The 1st B2B Web Media about E-Commerce in Europe. The team of E-Commerce Explorers help businesses to reach new potential market through delivering useful content. Let us know in comment if you enjoyed this content.