Before diving into big talk about improving metrics, you first need to do some research and get acquainted with the most important metrics to follow. After you’ve diligently done this, you can focus on making this metrics look good.
First off, you need to constantly monitor your numbers and save them for future reference. Then, when looking at your new numbers, you will get a pretty good idea about how well you’re doing. Goal: make your today metrics better than last weeks’ or last months’.
But there are cases of “lazy” metrics that don’t seem to move in a positive direction or move at all. So let’s see how to handle those and what you and your team can improve.
Measure the Volume of your Tickets
Learn to look at tickets not as the number of problems you’ve solved, but rather as the number of problems your business or products have. After all, the less customers request your help, the better the service, not the other way around. If your ticket volume is going up, find out why.
Pay attention to your team and whether they can manage an increasing number or not. An overwhelmed team is not an effective or happy team. Take care of them.
Then analyze the metric:
- Does the volume increase constantly at a pace or is it just a spike?
- If it is a spike, does it have anything to do with any change in the company?
- Are old problems still popping up? What kind of problems are these and how can you sort them out and address them?
All of these questions will help you investigate the problem and come up with solutions: Hire more people, improve communication, make procedures easier and more effective, prioritize etc.
Monitor your Ticket Backlog
These are your failed issues, meaning no resolution has been found during the normal timeframe. The more stuffed your backlog is, the more of a sign that something is not well in customer service paradise.
How to solve this issue?
Focus on answering every claim so that your customers know their issue is being handled. Then take them step by step and find solutions. Leaving customers waiting while you take care of just a few from start to finish will come off as not caring. This will be regarded as bad customer service.
Now answer some questions like is your customer support team big enough to handle the volume, are issues and procedures clear to your operators, do they have enough resources to enable them to react quickly, are there lots of small issues reported or few but big ones etc.
Once you answer these you can find actionable ways: hire more people, discuss situations and guidelines, train people better, investigate the nature of the issues and find fixes.
Solving Rate
This metric is naturally important as it tells you how many issues are being solved out of the total number. If the rate goes up, your support team is doing a great job. If the rate is going down, then your support team might have some problems dealing with tickets and you need to know what it is.
Low rate reasons: not enough staff, long response and resolution time, complex problems that need attention, product issues.
What to do: keep an open communication channel with your team at all times and don’t scare them into not passing on the difficulties they are facing, constantly check the backlog to see what problems keep coming up, analyze your resolution rate against number of replies or time spent on solving an issue. Maybe your team doesn’t have the best strategy for finding out the right problem and answering to it.
Answer time
How long does it take to answer to a ticket and then come up with a solution!? No customer should be dealt with on a stretching period of time. Quick and efficient responses are great for both your business and your clients. The longer a customer has to wait, the more chances he will consider the service poor.
How to handle this:
Find out the main problem: too much work volume, poor communication or organization strategy or a combo.
Solution: more hires, better customer support coverage in areas that seem to report issues, product and business improvement to facilitate the support operators work.
