With customer service planning conversations increasingly focused on re-opening, redesign, and planning for a post pandemic future, this recent Forbes article caught my eye.
In spite of the fact that none of the 10 smart tactics featured here point specifically to COVID-19, the truth is, they couldn’t be more timely. We often think in terms of the changes that we, as customer care providers, have undergone during the pandemic. At the same time, however, our customers’ needs and expectations have been shifting, too. How prepared are you to measure your customer service performance and ROI?
Although this article is primarily focused on how to use data to better understand what’s working and what isn’t, pay special attention to the many different ways that data is used alongside anecdotal observations of the human component. (Check out tactics 2, 3, 5, and 8 if you doubt me.) While efficiency and scalability are more important than ever, so is the humanity factor. Trust and collaboration are key, between your agents and customers, but also between supervisors and agents and across teams of agents, themselves. To me, the tactics outlined here are powerful reminders that, only with the best people, supported by best-in-class technology, will it be possible to drive customer loyalty going forward.
When you’re ready to learn more about how Skybridge Americas can help you improve your customer service ROI and deliver superior customer experience, please give us a call. We would love to talk!
10 Tactics For More Effectively Measuring Your Customer Service ROI
Customer service is vital to any organization, and investing in it can make all the difference in attracting and retaining clients. But the true return on those customer service investments—whether you’re hiring and training staff or increasing your support channels—can be hard to quantify with a single number.
While data isn’t everything, you’ll need some figures to determine the success of your investment and the next steps to take. Below, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council share 10 ways you can make your customer service ROI figures measurable and impactful.
- Analyze Qualitative With Quantitative
Good customer service is paramount to the success of any business. Investments need to be made to ensure that you have the right staff in place and that the right protocols are used. To track the resulting ROI, the best quantitative measures are renewal and repurchase rates, product/service engagement rates and overall customer satisfaction. Customer surveys can help provide a look at both quantitative and qualitative feedback. If you use a CRM system where conversations are saved, your team should review those regularly and go through the good and bad with other team members so that everyone can learn from those experiences. If you have a good team and they’re doing a good job, that should show up in customer feedback and reviews. – Carlo Cisco, SELECT
- Look At Repeat Customer Behavior
When a customer service rep has a meaningful connection, the impact can be long-lasting. A satisfied customer could post about it online or tell their friends. They’ll also probably be returning to you for additional products and services. An important ROI metric to measure is the percentage of customer interactions that encourage repeat shopping behavior. By having this broad view, you’re not limiting yourself to the success of a short-term upsell. Instead, you’re considering the long-term value you’re creating by building customer relationships. – Jack Tai, OneClass
- Focus On Customer Care Metrics
We don’t need to be convinced that satisfied customers are good for business, so we don’t necessarily measure customer service ROI. Instead, we focus on how to assess if our team is doing a great job of taking care of our customers. Metrics such as first response time, first response resolution, customer happiness and net promoter score are all measured and are extremely valuable. But ultimately, we focus on ensuring our culture of being a true ally to our customers is ingrained in our team. When team members share unprompted stories of going above and beyond to help customers or highlight energizing customer interactions, we know we’ve been successful. – Saloni Doshi, Eco Enclose, LLC
- Aggregate Your Support Channels And Measure NPS
There are two important steps to take when it comes to building a healthy customer service team: aggregating different support channels and implementing a user-driven success metric such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Funneling all channels into a single help desk (or two at most) would reduce management overhead and increase visibility. Certain tools aggregate social media accounts into the same feed. Your live chat can be forwarded to Slack or your help desk. Adding a user-driven rating on top of that related to every agent that participated with a clear dashboard will streamline the review and evaluation process as you keep scaling the team. – Mario Peshev, DevriX
- Keep Your Team Engaged With Clients
Make sure your team is communicating with clients and staying engaged. It’s important not only to build new relationships with clients, but to maintain that relationship through communication, such as video chats once a week, phone calls and even hand-written letters. Communication should be a natural habit in a good business/client relationship. For example, when my team communicates with clients, we talk about more than just business. We find out how they are doing, what they’ve been up to and what they’re looking forward to. We also make sure to recognize important events like a marriage, a new addition to the family, birthday, etc. Relationships with your clients should be deeper than business-level. That’s how businesses make a true impact on their clients. – John Hall, Calendar
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Bobby Matthews
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Skybridge Americas
bmatthews@skybridgeamericas.com
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