Sales Tips

10 Best Customer Support KPIs Your Business Should Track

June 15, 2018

5 min.

It’s not enough for businesses to simply say they’re going to make more of an effort to improve the customer experience by improving customer support. They have to be able to track what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong in order to make the most accurate decisions in terms of what the next step to achieving their goals is.

In order to do this, businesses should keep track of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that directly reflect what their support teams should be striving to accomplish. These metrics can include Resolution Time, Customer Retention, and Number of New Tickets. We’ll break down these customer support KPIs and many more to give your business a general idea of what to track and why.

Click to jump to KPI, or keep reading for our top customer support KPIs.

KPI #1 Resolution Time

Resolution Time refers to the amount of time it takes for a support team to resolve a ticket.

Businesses, regardless of size, want this number to be as low as possible. The faster a support team can resolve an issue, the more likely the customer will perceive the encounter as a positive customer experience. Faster results mean less people are waiting for their turn to get help. Your CRM software should absolutely have this feature as it is essential for better customer support.

KPI #2 Customer Retention

Customer Retention, as the name suggests, is the number of customers a business is able to retain long term and the business’ ability to continue to generate revenue from those existing customers. Businesses want this number to be high. Having a solid foundation of returning customers shows support teams that if/when mistakes inevitably arise, they’re more than capable of handling them quickly and properly.

KPI #3 Number of New Tickets

Number of New Tickets is simply the number of tickets support agents are receiving. A high number of new tickets suggests to support teams that there is something wrong with the product their business is selling or their support needs work because issues continue to go unresolved. Having a low number of new tickets is ideal because support agents will naturally have less on their plate on a regular basis.

KPI #4 Active Issues

Active issues are issues that are currently active. This slightly differs from Number of New Tickets because Active Issues can be hanging around on a business’ task list for a while, whereas New Tickets focus on exactly that: new tickets. Having too many active issues open is a good indicator for support teams that something has to change -- whether they’re not communicating effectively or they can’t handle multiple tickets.

KPI #5 Customer Satisfaction Score

Customer Satisfaction Score is a great customer support KPI for businesses to track because it involves a number of things like tweets, blog posts, and Facebook posts. It can also be offered at the end of a customer experience survey where customers are asked to judge their overall experience on a scale from one to five, five being the best.

KPI #6 Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score is used to track customer loyalty by, again, asking customers in a customer experience survey how they viewed the overall support experience; however, this focuses more on if these customers would recommend a business to other people.

This is significant for support teams because if few people are going out of their way to recommend a business to people they know, it’s up to the support team to ensure any problems that may be the inspiration behind the lack of success are resolved quickly.

KPI #7 First Response Time

First Response Time is a good KPI for customer support agents to track because it shows how quickly agents respond to tickets. Customers want quick responses now more than ever. The longer they have to wait for one, the more likely they will take their business elsewhere. If customers feel like their problems aren’t being resolved quickly, they’ll go to social media to express their frustrations to everyone they know. Businesses can easily avoid this risk by implementing follow-up automations.

KPI #8 Occupancy Rate

Occupancy Rate focuses primarily on how long support agents are occupied with their customers. The longer they’re with a customer, the less likely the experience is going well. People want quick responses to simple problems, which is why self-service is a major trend in 2018. By lowering the amount of time agents spend with their customers, without rushing them and leaving them with more questions, businesses can stay focused on the more important issues.

KPI #9 Customer Effort Score

Customer Effort Score tracks how easy or hard it is for customers to find solutions on their own, whether it’s by finding a number to reach a support agent or by finding links to a knowledge base so they can handle their problems themselves. The longer it takes a customer to find what they’re looking for, the less satisfied they’ll be. By decreasing the amount of time it takes to find the right support channel, agents and the business come off as more transparent to the needs of their customers.

KPI #10 Conversations Per Agent

Conversations Per Agent allow support teams to see how much or how little each agent is working on. If an agent has too much on their plate, it doesn’t make sense to keep piling on other tickets — especially if there are agents who are just as capable and don’t nearly have as much to do. By finding the right balance, agents can work comfortably without having to focus on getting through each interaction as quickly as possible. It goes without saying that businesses who commit to providing positive customer experiences tend to see more overall success.

We live in a very social world where people are dying to help each other whenever possible. By keeping track of these customer support KPIs, businesses can stay on top of their agents and customers in order to ensure better customer experiences every single time and acquire higher customer retention rates.

Customers are more willing to spend money when they know they’ll receive quality support and are more willing to recommend those businesses to other people. It’s time to start taking advantage of that by keeping track of these KPIs.

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Reuben Yonatan

Reuben Yonatan is the founder of GetVoIP — a VoIP comparison resource that helps companies understand and choose a business communication solution for their specific needs. Follow on Twitter @ReubenYonatan

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