Five Metrics That Translate Across Customer Service Jobs

While customer service may seem like a fairly straightforward concept—satisfy customer needs to increase business—it requires a certain amount of legwork to prepare it for public implementation. That's when customer-service metrics come in handy. They offer a window into the consumer's mind, laying out what they want and how they want it in a neat package of data.

Here are five universal metrics that comprise the cornerstone of every customer-service job:

1. The first customer-service metric deals with the speediness of your response time. How quickly do your pick up the telephone or send an email once the customer has reached out to you? Hopefully, your response is within a couple of minutes. According to the studies referenced in a recent Buffer article, customers prefer a three-minute wait for telephone support and 24 hours for emails.
    
2. Customer service exists to handle customer troubles and concerns. How quickly you solve a problem greatly influences customer satisfaction. Oddly enough, research has shown that a speedy resolution to a problem does more to heighten satisfaction than the absence of a problem. A recent CMSWire article defines this customer-service metric as the customer-effort score, which evaluates how many hoops customers have to jump through before reaching a resolution. The key is to eliminate all hoops but one.
    
3. Another important aspect of the problem-solution model is the viability of the proffered solution. It's important to figure out whether the customer's problem was successfully resolved. Improving customer service means paying careful attention to this customer-service metric.
    
4. In the end, how would customers rate their overall experience? The success of any business lies in the answer to this question. As Mary-Nestor Harper notes in the Nexxt article, "The Scary New Normal for Customer Service," consumers gravitate toward good service. Good service, of course, brings in new and repeat customers. Conveniently, customer-experience indexes allow you to track your customers' happiness over time, providing useful data that speaks volumes about the quality of service.
    
5. Customer loyalty is the bread and butter of any customer-service sector. This is where the time and expense of dedicated support pays off with customers monetarily invested in the company. In this regard, the Wallet Allocation Rule is a particularly useful customer-service metric. It helps businesses gauge their share of a customer's wallet and loyalty.

Customer service is a standard most businesses can’t afford to neglect. From brick-and-mortar stores to ecommerce giants, developing and improving customer service produces a measurable impact on a company's success. Just ask JCPenney and Sears, whose service pitfalls are partially to blame for their financial woes. Executing customer-service metrics and transforming the results into customer-service goals will help build a reputation for excellence and boost sales.

Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net