The 8 Most Important Metrics In Customer Service

If you’re applying automation or artificial intelligence to customer experience, you need to be able to benchmark whether or not technology is truly improving both your employee and customer experience. Here are the 8 key metrics that establish the efficacy of a customer service system.

What Customer Service Metrics Should You Care About?

1. Average Handle Time

The Average Handle Time (AHT) describes the average duration of a single transaction, from customer’s initiation through to the conclusion of the request. This includes talk time, hold time and time spent after the call to conclude the transaction. AHT is one of the most important factors in analyzing the call-center model and determining staffing levels.

2. First Contact Resolution

First Contact Resolution (FCR) is a metric quantifying the percentage of transactions that are resolved on the first call, without requiring follow-up by the customer. This value is strongly linked to customer satisfaction. According to a Forrester 2013 report, 73% of customers find “first contact resolution” to be an important factor for customer satisfaction. Another version of this metric is the Average Number of Replies per Request. This indicate the how many replies it takes to resolve a customer request. This should metric should be below two replies.

3. Time To Resolution

Time To Resolution – also called mean time to resolution (MTTR) and resolution time – is the average amount of time it takes to resolve a case. It’s usually measured in days or business hours. Because no one wishes to spend a lot of time dealing with customer service, MTTR is directly linked to customer satisfaction.

4. Meaningful Connections Score

The Meaningful Connections Score (MCS), is a proprietary technology from LivePerson that gives real time feedback on customer satisfaction. Their engine analyzes customer responses during a conversation and scores them on a scale from negative to positive. Using MCS flagging can increase FCR, enhance contact center management quality monitoring, increase upsells and improve operational efficiency.

5. First Response Time

First Response Time is how long it takes for customers to receive an initial reply. Customers have different expectations depending on their contact channel. Customers expect a faster reply on social media and are comfortable waiting longer for email responses.

6. Customer Deflection 

Customer Deflection, also known as customer churn or customer defection, is the rate at which customers are lost. It is calculated as the percent of customers who buy in one period and not in the next. This important metric provides a clear indication that customers see diminishing value from the company. A climbing defection rate is an equally clear predictor of revenue loss for a company. Even if the lost customers are replaced, new customers cost money to acquire and old customers tend to be greater contributors to cash flow.

7. Containment Rate

With customer service tickets costing between $4 – $12 for human agents to handle, a key metrics for automated customer experience systems is whether or not a bot, chatbot, or virtual agent was able to adequately resolve a customer issue without escalating to service staff. Successful implementations of customer experience automation can divert over 90% of support requests away from call centers.

8. Net Promoter Score

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures the likelihood of a customer recommending a given business to a friend or colleague. It is calculated through customer surveys. While often heralded as one of the most important customer service metrics, it remains controversial due to the nature of data gathering.