Measurable Success: 8 Customer Service KPIs That Matter To Your Business

How to Define Customer Service Performance? 

Customer service performance is more than just productivity and results. It’s about creating an efficient and effective way of working to realize the best customer experience. To measure customer service performance, you need to gather data and insights from your customers and your customer service team. Customer service software helps to generate data and oftentimes includes reporting options. Think about the following questions: 

• What are the actual customer needs and preferences?  
• How is the team currently performing?  

Use the data to set the right goals and KPIs: Customer KPIs as well as Operational KPIs.  

4 Customer KPIs to Improve Customer Experience 

Customer KPIs are measurable metrics used to determine performance, specifically to optimize customer experience. As customer expectations change constantly and are different per customer, it’s important to analyze customer data. This can help to understand customers and improve your service accordingly.  

In general, customer expectations can be divided into three categories (McKinsey, 2019):  

1. Speed and flexibility 
2. Reliability and transparency 
3. Interaction and care 

You could say, every customer expects to be helped as good and efficient as possible, with a personal touch. From these three categories, we derived four measurable KPIs that will help you to improve customer experience.  

The Four Customer KPIs for Customer Service: 

1. Speed. How fast can customers expect a response? This KPI can be measured as ‘response time’. 
2. Availability. How available is your customer service team? Can customers reach you anytime, anywhere? Measure this KPI based on ‘coverage’ and ‘presence’ of live interactions. 
3. Effectiveness. Every customer wants to be helped effectively. Clear answers, but also thoroughly enough to move forward. Set standards to define answers as ‘effective’.  
4. Friendliness. A friendly, human interaction improves customer experience. Use customer feedback to measure friendliness.  

4 Operational KPIs to Improve Business Performance 

Offering a great customer experience is only possible if your customer service department processes are in order. Optimizing your customer service department by making it more effective and efficient, with full focus on the customer, will also save you costs. Operational KPIs help you measure efficiency and effectiveness. A well-performing customer service team: 

• Is consistent in providing quality customer service 
• Has a customer-driven mindset 
• Is flexible and responds fast to change 

Keep track of four metrics to reach the above goals. Measure your current performance and set goals to improve.  

The Four Operational KPIs for Customer Service: 

1. Productivity. How productive are the customer service representatives? Think about the number of conversations handled, the resolution rate or response time as KPIs.  
2. Engagement. Measure how engaged your team is with your customers. How accessible is your customer service team? How often is Live Chat used?  
3. Contribution. What is the impact of customer service on the bottom line? Measure if and how conversations lead to conversions.  
4. Prevention. Prevention is better than cure. When you help customers effectively, you can prevent complaints.  

Start using your data today 

Ready to improve your customer service? Setting the right KPIs for your customer service team will give focus and improve performance. Use the data to continuously improve both Customer KPIs as Operational KPIs. Learn how to measure these 8 Customer Service KPIs and effectively use them. Discover more in our paper.