The Customer Support Performance Metrics and KPIs – That Actually Matter
Customer support performance metrics allow you to assess, evaluate, and benchmark the performance of your customer support program – which makes them kinda a big deal.
Chances are you will have heard of the top customer support metrics, they’re things like: Net Promoter Score, Customer satisfaction score (CSAT), and customer effort score (CES).
But before you rush ahead and start tracking these metrics across your customer support program – be warned. To be effective, customer support metrics need to be used as part of a cohesive plan – one that ensures you can actually use data you gather to drive performance improvement.
On this page, we outline the essential ingredients of that cohesive plan including:
- What are customer support key performance indicators and metrics?
- What are the benefits of measuring customer support metrics and KPIs for your business?
- Customer support KPI examples (and customer support metric examples)
- What are the pitfalls of using customer support metrics and KPIs?
- One approach to OKRs for customer support teams
What are customer support key performance indicators and metrics?
Key definition: Customer support key performance indicators (or KPIs) and metrics are quantifiable measurements that allow businesses to monitor the performance of their customer support programs.
And what's the distinction between them? Well, there’s more nuance to it than this but the high-level of it is KPIs are strategic and often include a timeline. For example: ‘Reduce customer churn by 10% over the next 6 months’. Metrics are more operational / tactical and measure specific performance in discrete areas. For example ‘customer churn rate’.
Customer support KPIs and metrics can help you chart your path to your bigger strategic goals. Those often tracked by businesses include, CSAT, cost per ticket, resolution percentage, churn rate, average response time, etc.
What are the metrics to track? That will be specific to your company, your industry, and your product. Use a cookie-cutter approach and you’ll give yourself serious headaches.
For example, if your customer support KPIs and metrics aren’t tied to clear objectives, you can find them either to be ineffective or just straight up confusing for teams trying to track their performance. That’s especially the case if you’re tracking things that don’t reflect the actual work your teams do.
To avoid this pitfall, keep customer support KPIs and metrics specific, relevant, and tied long-term objectives.
In the next section we explore the benefits of measuring customer support KPIs and metrics – the right way.
What are the benefits of measuring customer support metrics and KPIs for your business?
Key definition: The combined benefits of measuring customer support metrics and KPIs for your business are that they:
- Give you visibility into the health of your customer support program
- Allow you benchmark your performance against your competitors
- Provide valuable insight into how your customer feel about your business
- Open the door to proactive improvement of your customer support program
- Allow you to measure your progress towards strategic goals
There’s also one big overall benefit of measuring customer support metrics and KPIs. They allow businesses to close the gap between how they think they’re satisfying customers and what customers actually experience.
It’s the kind of intelligence that’s worth its weight in gold.
For example, one study found that 79% of call center managers thought they were meeting or exceeding customer expectations for response times, but just 45% of consumers agreed.
It’s important to KPIs make a positive impact beyond your customer support program.
For example, metrics like customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores and KPIs like the number of word-of-mouth recommendations over a given time frame, will ultimately impact your bottom line.
That’s because CSAT scores can make customers more sticky, which can drive business metrics like net revenue retention. And word-of-mouth recommendations can in turn drive sales conversion rates, and can reduce the cost of acquiring a customer.
Get this stuff right and it can make a big difference to your business.
Customer support KPI examples (and customer support metric examples)
If you want the most impactful blend of customer support metrics for your business will be specific to your product, your business model, your industry, and your company's current position. However, there are some core metrics that apply to just about every business on the planet.
1. Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures how likely customers are to recommend your product or service to their peers. Customers score your business out of 10, and based on this score customers are put into one of three categories: promoters (scores of 9-10), passives (scores 7-8), and detractors (scores 1-6)
Calculation: NPS = % of Promoters - % of Detractors.
If you’re nailing your customer support program, your customers are more likely to promote your business to their peers.
2. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the total revenue your business is predicted to generate from a given customer over the entire time they are a customer of yours. It’s an estimate based on the buying behaviors of the customer such as the number of purchases they make in a given period of time. A common way to calculate CLV is:
Calculation: CLV = (Average Purchase Value × Purchase Frequency) × Predicted Customer Lifespan
A strong customer support program can help boost your CLV as it can help drive customer retention or improve the chance of successful upsell and cross-sell.
3. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a metric that assesses how satisfied customers are with your product, service, or brand overall. Customers are asked to score your business on a scale typically 1-10.
Calculation: CSAT = (Sum of All Customer Satisfaction Scores / Number of Respondents) × 100.
Understandably, the more effective your customer support program is, the higher your CSAT score. The average score is typically between 75-85%. But with the correct customer support program, you can go much higher. For example, Spotify achieved a 92% CSAT score by working with us – more on that here.
4. Customer acquisition cost payback (CAC Payback) measures the amount of time it takes to pay back the cost of acquiring a new customer (your break-even point). This metric has become increasingly important as businesses move to SaaS based business models where customers pay in monthly installments. You can find out more about customer support for SaaS here. A common way to calculate CAC Payback is:
Calculation: CAC Payback = Sales and Marketing Expense / Adjusted SaaS Gross Margin.
Related to your customer satisfaction score, if you’re not providing customers with the support they need, fewer of them will reach CAC Payback.
5. Customer churn rate measures the number of customers your business loses over a given period.
Calculation: CCR = [(Number of Customers at End of Period - Number of New Customers Acquired During Period) / Number of Customers at Start of Period] × 100.
When your customer support program is not functioning well, customers tend to look for alternatives. Keeping an eye on your churn rate can help you assess the effectiveness of your customer support program.
6. First contact resolution rate (FCR) measures how many customers are able to solve their problem, issue, or inquiry within a single interaction with your customer support program.
Calculation: FCR = (Number of Cases Resolved on First Contact / Total Number of Cases) × 100.
FCR helps you assess the quality of the support your customer receives via your support channels.
7. Customer effort score (CES) measures how easy it is for customers to find a solution to their problem or inquiry. Customers are typically asked to rank the ease / friction they experienced on the way to a resolution out of 10.
Calculation: CES = Sum of All Scores / Number of Respondents.
CES helps your businesses work out how effective its customer support channels are.
What are the pitfalls of using customer support metrics and KPIs?
Key definition: The pitfalls of using customer support metrics and KPIs are that if not used as part of a cohesive strategy, they can provide little value. Taken out of context they can also provide an inaccurate picture of your performance.
With that in mind, we explore three common mistakes businesses can make with metrics and KPIs for customer support.
- Using KPIs and metrics in isolation: Using metrics in isolation can blind your business from what’s really going on with your customers. For example, if you measure at first call resolution rate but don’t measure customer effort score, you might miss the fact that while many customers resolve the issue in one interaction, the process of getting to that resolution was excruciating for customers.
- Not analyzing KPIs and metrics: Some businesses have a strong metric and KPI framework but they spend little time interpreting the data that they collect. They might know that their customer effort score is increasing but without analyzing why and how it relates to industry benchmarks, the data they’re collecting won’t provide much value.
- Not acting on KPI and metrics: Metrics and KPIs can provide the insight businesses need to improve their customer support program in the most impactful and efficient way – but only if they have a system and a strategy to actually act on their findings.
To avoid these pitfalls, we ensure all of our ModSquad customers benefit from a fully data-driven approach from the start. From our very first sales call, we assess your challenges, your tools, your metrics, and your KPIs. Then we get our teeth into building a quantitative model of your customer support program.
And after that, we continue to monitor your performance so we can make data-driven optimizations on everything from channel choices, to the best hourly on-demand staffing approach.
You can find out more about how we approach continuous performance management in our manifesto.
One approach to OKRs for customer support teams
Before we jump into customer support OKR examples, it’s important to know that OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are essentially a framework that helps you turn KPIs and metrics into impact.
They do this by ensuring you’re always tying them to a tangible objective.
All too often people will say, “We’re measuring CSAT now” without any real plan for how or why. OKRs help you avoid that situation.
There are many different to set OKRs – we explore one methodology in these customer support OKR examples:
Objective: Increase CSAT score by 10% over next six months.
Key result 1: Analyze current completion rates of surveys and increase completion rate by 30% over three months.
Key result 2: Identify three biggest contributors to low scores and implement a performance improvement plan to cover each over four months.
Key result 3: Maintain completion rate of CSAT surveys and tackle two additional low score contributing factors over two months.
Objective: Reduce customer effort score by 20% over the next six months.
Key result 1: Analyze current completion rates of surveys and increase completion rate by 30% over three months.
Key result 2: Develop self-service customer support content based on most frequently asked tier 0 inquiries over two months.
Key result 3: Increase peak-time calling capacity using a data-driven approach over the first month.
Key result 4: Maintain completion rate of surveys over three months.
Typically, OKRs are broken down into objectives and 3-4 key results per objective.
Objectives outline the goal your team hopes to achieve whereas key results are the milestones you will need to hit to achieve those goals. Key objectives always include a deadline or timeframe to ensure objectives are hit in a coordinated way.
OKRs provide a simple way for customer support teams to focus their efforts, measure their progress, and continually improve their performance.