Quality of customer service is crucial for the long-term success of any business. KPIs are essential to ensuring a steady increase in performance and the quality of standards over time. The setting of KPIs can assist in tracking progress toward desired results.
To take full advantage of it, let’s take a closer look at:
- What are KPIs?
- Why are they important?
- Some effective examples and much more.
What is the meaning of KPI?
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are objective, measurable values that enable you to easily assess performance and progress toward organizational goals.
You can monitor the success of individual projects and evaluate entire strategies in real time using metrics. By selecting KPIs correctly, you can gain more insight into where you stand in relation to your objectives.
As a result, you are able to identify your strengths and weaknesses.
Why are KPIs important?
It is essential to measure progress using KPIs, which provide valuable insight into the performance of a business.
This allows you to:
- Monitor performance over time and compare it with goals much more accurately than you could otherwise.
- Develop strategies that better suit your needs and goals by analyzing KPIs and pinpointing areas for improvement.
- Have objective evidence when it comes to responding to customer feedback or complaints.
- Improve your products and services.
In short, you can use KPIs to understand how close you are to achieving your goals and set new goals for continued success.
What are the different types of KPIs?
Individuals and organizations can use different types of KPIs depending on their goals and needs.
There are generally four types of KPIs:
- Input KPIs indicate resources needed to achieve desired outcomes such as personnel, budget, time, and technology.
- Process KPIs measure intermediate stages throughout a project such as completion rate, cost performance index, and customer satisfaction score.
- Output KPIs focus on outputs including production throughput rates, revenue per employee, and customer conversions.
- Outcome measures are based on reaching ultimate goals like return on investment (ROI), and market share gain.
Choosing the right KPI for your business can ensure you accurately measure your operational results.
How to set contact center KPIs
Setting the right KPIs for a contact center can be an essential step to ensure customer satisfaction and successful customer service.
- Define your goals: This will allow you to start developing KPIs that will help you achieve them.
- Understand your customers when setting KPIs.
- Clearly define simple and achievable KPIs that align with your business’s top-level objectives.
- Use relevant tools to track these KPIs, such as automated dashboards or scheduling software programs.
- Set targets for each one once you have selected the KPIs that you want to track.
What are some examples of good KPIs for customer service?
Your KPIs will vary depending on your goals. Nevertheless, you may consider the following KPIs when evaluating your customer service:
First Call Resolution (FCR) Rate
The First Call Resolution Rate is an important metric for measuring customer service performance.
The success rate measures how well your agents understand a problem and provide a solution without having to transfer or return calls.
To see improvements here:
- Focus on training employees in communication skills,
- Provide scripts/surveys for guidance,
- Set out clear processes for them to follow.
Average Handle Time (AHT)
From start to finish, AHT measures all associated interactions such as:
- Wait times before reaching an agent,
- Time spent navigating IVR systems,
- Potential follow-up conversations or tasks related to aftercare.
The importance of AHT is clear with research indicating that 56% of customers are unwilling to do business again after one bad experience.
Call center software should consider the entire interaction, from the start to any after-call follow-up. This insight often reveals how efficiently customers are handled.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score
Measuring customer satisfaction is key to measuring your brand’s experience program’s success. CSAT surveys help you understand how satisfied customers are with recent interactions or purchases.
You can gain valuable insight into customer loyalty and weak points in your service landscape by simply asking one straightforward question.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
In short, CES determines how much effort your customers have put into resolving issues or answering questions. A CES is a unique way to measure the effort your customers put into interacting with your business.
- It helps you track how easy it was for them to use the products or services you offer.
- It also captures the experience of customers when they contact customer service reps to solve their problems.
Ticket Volume by Channel
Analyzing the number of issues created and solved by agents by channel gives you valuable insight into customer preferences and your staff’s capacity.
It may be necessary to measure these factors:
- How well processes are running,
- Whether agents are needed,
- Pinpoint which channels could do better if there’s too high an imbalance.
Understanding customer demand and preferences can help you optimize your team’s capacity.
KPIs play a crucial role in the success of any contact center. Monitoring and assessing KPI metrics allows you to:
- Make data-driven decisions to achieve their goals
- Gain valuable insights into their processes
- Evaluate their teams’ performance
- And maintain high levels of customer satisfaction
By utilizing Call Center Studio, you will be able to gain valuable insights into your call center operations and maximize efficiency at every stage with set KPIs.
Check out Call Center Studio today.
