How to measure customer service success

Effective customer service is at the core of every business. It’s how you attract and retain customers, spot areas for improvement, and ultimately gain a competitive advantage.

According to HubSpot, 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with a company if they’ve received great customer service – and 78% are likely to forgive a business for a mistake if they were provided with exceptional customer service along the way.

And for the businesses who don’t take their customer service seriously, the impact can be catastrophic for their brand, reputation, and bottom line.

It’s clear how important customer service is to business success, but how do you measure customer service? Let’s delve into the detail.

Customer service vs customer success: the key differences

Measuring customer service begins with understanding how customer service and customer success differ. Customer service is the support, assistance and advice a company gives to its customers before, during and after they interact with your products or services. On the other hand, customer success is more of the proactive treatment a company gives to its customers to nurture them and secure ongoing business.

Customer service:

• Focuses on resolving immediate situations [BM1] as they arise, whether that’s solving a problem or making a functional update, for an example changing an email address.
• Is typically reactive in nature, and can include responding to customer enquiries and complaints[BM2] . This can happen on any channel, whether that’s over the phone, by email, or on the website or social platforms.
• Is measured by metrics like response time, resolution time, and customer satisfaction
• Often includes transaction-based interactions

Customer success:

• Focuses on helping customers achieve their desired outcomes with your product/service
• Is more of a proactive approach to prevent problems and identify opportunities
• Is measured by metrics like customer retention, expansion revenue, and lifetime value
• Builds ongoing relationships and strategic partnerships

Measuring customer service satisfaction

Now we know the difference between customer service and customer success, we’re going to look at ways to measure customer service. Measuring your customer service is important to help you know what you’re doing well, identify areas for improvement, and drive customer satisfaction. Here are a few of the core customer service measurement methods:

• Average handle time (AHT)

This is the amount of time it takes your customer service team to solve a problem for a customer, and it’s a figure that really matters. Of course, you have to take into account that some problems are more complex and take longer to solve, as well as the experience of your customer service team, but on the whole, it’s safe to say the faster, the better.

• First response time

When a customer needs support, it can often be for an urgent reason. That’s why it’s important to understand how quickly your team is able to reach your customer, and take steps to bring this time down.

• Resolution rate

Tracking the number of tickets solved can help you identify how your team is performing against targets, and see where more training may be needed for newer team members. First Contact Resolution (FCR) is something we measure here at Sigma Connected, involving resolving a customer issue or complaint on the first time of asking. However, this isn’t just about how quickly the phone is picked up, but a commitment to training and development, having appropriate policies in place, and building a team of knowledgeable, empathetic people who can make FCR success far greater. Check out our FCR blog for more on this important topic and how it can contribute to overall customer service success.

• Customer service abandonment rates

If you have particularly long response times, you may also see a correlation with customer service abandonment rates. This refers to the number of customers who hang up the phone or end the communication before they speak to one of your agents, and can provide valuable data to improve response times.

• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

A customer satisfaction survey allows you to measure your CSAT score, asking customers to rank their recent support experience on a scale of 1 to 5. These surveys can also allow you to ask more open questions, and gather more insightful responses about what is and isn’t going well.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is a measure of customer loyalty that involves customers being asked if they would recommend your product or services to others. One of the most well-known customer service measurement tools, NPS benchmarks and categorises your customers into ‘Promoters’, ‘Passives’ and ‘Detractors’, giving you an insight into your customer sentiment.

• Customer retention rate

Customer retention rates refer to the percentage of your customers who not only choose you once, but continue to use your products and servicers over time. It’s a great way to determine customer loyalty and overall satisfaction with your brand – helping you on your way to more successful customer service.

• Third party reviews

As so many customers use external review sites like Trustpilot and Google Reviews to share their experiences with a company, scores and ratings here can provide an important view on customer satisfaction. Ratings can be used to improve specific products and services, as well as boost all-round loyalty.

Our customer service success stories

Creating 5-star Trustpilot scores within 5 weeks of go live for a telco client

When a respected telco company came to us with a number of customer service challenges – including talent attraction and an increased cost and shortfall in quality of service – we set to work on transforming their customer service for good.

Working across 3 distinct phases, we delivered training, set up new systems, embedded knowledge and worked to recruit and retain the right people. The client used AHT and Trustpilot reviews to track our progress, and the results were phenomenal.

Key results

• AHT: We took only 5 weeks to achieve the glidepath, 3 weeks ahead of plan
• Trustpilot: 6 weeks after go-live, 97% of our Trust Pilot reviews were 4* or above. 91% of our reviews were 5*. This far exceeded the number of 5* reviews being achieved both internally and from existing partners.

Achieving #1 ranking for customer service for a challenger energy supplier.

Our client’s aim was to achieve the top spot in the Citizens Advice Bureau supplier ratings for complaints, so they tasked us with helping them reach that goal.

After taking a detailed look at agent feedback and data analysis, we were able to isolate and remove some of the day-to-day agent frustrations that were impacting the customer experience – increasing agent team size and focusing on learning and development.

This resulted in a significant improvement in retention, with agents feeling more valued, supported and empowered. And this had a big impact on customer service.

Key results

• First contact resolution grew from 51% to 76%, which led to less complaints and repeat contact from customers.
• The number of FTEs fell by 16%, saving £1.35m[BM3]  per annum.
• Our client achieved the highest spot in CAB ratings for the lowest number of complaints.

Boost your customer service quality with Sigma Connected

When it comes to exploring successful customer service strategies, there’s no substitute for having the experts by your side. At Sigma Connected, we have a proven track record of supporting clients across a wide range of industries to improve their customer service quality – offering tailored solutions built around you and your customers. And crucially, we always look at the story behind the data to continually improve outcomes. This can include:

• Support with scalability: If peak periods put a strain on your team, we can step in to provide flexible staffing and state-of-the-art tools for automating simpler tasks.
• Improved response times: As we’ve already explored, long wait times can be the difference between customer loss and loyalty. We offer round-the-clock support, so your customers get the response they need, fast.
• Successful complaint management: Managing complaints effectively and sensitively needs experience, so let us take care of it for you.
• Customer service consistency: We proudly act as an extension of your team to ensure your customers always have a consistently excellent experience with your brand.
• Personalisation: We leverage valuable customer data to tailor our approach to your customers’ unique needs.
• Experience with vulnerable customers: Vulnerable customers require an experienced approach, which is why our advisors have extensive training in this area of customer support.

If you’re ready to delve deeper into your customer service experience and begin your journey towards improving outcomes, without losing the human touch, get in touch with our team today.

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