6 Customer Support Metrics You Must Track For Your Business 

You have a functioning customer support team. Well, Great! But that’s just half the job done. It is equally important to monitor what is working and what is not for a more productive workflow. And this is where your customer support metrics get to flex their muscles. 

A Salesforce research submits that 89% of customers will re-patronize a business after an exceptional customer service experience. But what is an exceptional customer service experience? Well, that’s subjective.

Still, there are several ways to meet the vast definition of exceptional customer support. But the genesis of them all is understanding your current customer service health, gaps, and opportunities to ride on. With an insightful and data-backed perspective into your customer service condition, it becomes easier to go from simply okay to exceptional. 

This article will help you get your fingers on the pulse and keep you in sync with six important customer service metrics to track henceforth. 

1. Backlog of tickets

Ticket backlog refers to unresolved support requests by your customer service team over a specific period. 

An unusually high amount of unresolved tickets can tell two stories. It can indicate sub-par customer service performance. But it could also result from an unprecedented increase in your incoming tickets.  

Nonetheless, it tells when you need to power up your customer support and ticketing system and serve your customers better. 

To identify backlogs, decide on your average resolution time. For example, if you decide on ten days as your normal ticket resolution timeframe, tally all the tickets unresolved for this period. These are the backlogged tickets. 

Further, as the image below captures, you can tally and assess these unresolved tickets monthly to track your progress.

From the image, getting your resolutions to match or exceed the conversation should be your priority. But the question is how? 

You might be thinking, “why not just bring in more customer support agents?” Well, that works. However, concentrating your customer service team with profiles you don't need is not advisable.

So, ideally, filter your unresolved tickets into various types. For instance, if you run a fintech company, sort them into balance inquiries, dispensation errors, etc. With this, you’ll understand what personnel you need to hire for a more streamlined workflow. 

Also, load your FAQs section with answers to the most common customer issues. Similarly, create blogs or other resources to help them address these uniform concerns. Then, redirect those customers to these resources. This gives you enough time to prioritize the more technical requests. 

According to MIT Technology Review, 90% of companies using Chatbots experience faster complaints resolution. So, adopting a chatbot in your workflow can also be a vital piece in your backlog puzzle. 

2. Customer retention rate

It is easier to sell to existing customers than to a new prospect. An Invespcro study confirms this. 

So, evidently, retaining your existing customers should be your leading priority. Your customer retention rate (CRR) defines the percentage of clients you can retain over a specific period. Success, here, depends on how much effort you put into customer satisfaction and good customer support. 

Once you convert a prospect to a paying client, your customer support agent becomes their primary contact point. Therefore, track this metric from their viewpoint.

To calculate CRR, see the formula in the image below. 

Source

The closer your customer retention rate gets to 100%, the higher your customer support efficiency. Of course, other factors influence customer retention (like product quality), but customer support is undoubtedly one of them. 

If you find this pedaling towards zero, that's customer churn. Customer churn means you're losing customers. There are ways to rectify this. 

You have two types of customers in your customer support workflow;

• Intermittent users: these are your occasional customers. Reach out to them via convenient channels. Offer them win-back offers and other perks to boost their retention. 
• New users: with your customer support, help these users see the value in your product. 

Prioritize their concerns and help them accomplish all they want to do without any hassle. This is the genesis of boosting your retention.

3. Support tickets volume 

This customer service metric measures the total number of incoming tickets. You can further break the volume of support tickets down based on their category to understand your customers' pain points. 

When you keep track of the changes in your ticket volume over time, you’ll understand the amount of pressure on your customer service agents. This lets you know the right time to reinforce your workforce. 

Let’s take a look at the picture below. The abnormal increase in the support ticket from 07 to 08 can signify faults in specific products or unprecedented drawbacks in your service. 

Source

Create some self-service or automated support systems to avoid overwhelming your support team with tickets. These will handle the basic concerns and leave only the technical issues to your team. 

4. The rate of answered calls 

This is another metric to gauge your customer service team's efficiency and understand what experience you’ve been offering your customer. To calculate this, divide your number of answered calls by the overall calls and multiply by 100. 

Assuming your company call log records 100 calls daily and you were only able to answer 70. Your answered call rate, in this case, is 70%. 

A higher rate of answered calls usually denotes an optimum call support-staff ratio. In essence, your current workforce has what it takes to cater to incoming calls. Since they can handle customer pain points effectively, expect a more satisfied customer base. 

Conversely, a lower rate signifies sub-par team efficiency. In this case, you’re leaving several calls unanswered, which could make customers form negative opinions about your brand. But not to worry. There are radical steps you can take to increase this value. 

Firstly, get more call center personnel onboard to balance out the lacking call support – staff ratio. Also, encourage positive reinforcement by awarding milestones after answering a specific amount of calls and resolving customer issues. 

Similarly, you can buy into the trend of interactive voice responses (IVR) or hire virtual assistants, helping you ease the burden of incoming calls from your customer service team. 

5. The median first responses

Your first response is the time difference between when your customer raises a ticket and when someone from your customer service team first attends to it. The median first response means you must list your first response times over a particular period. Then, choose the middle number. 

The image below captures a better picture. 

You can measure this median daily and create a spiky graph with tools like GrooveHQ software, as shown in the image below. This will help you monitor its progress. 

A low median first response means your customer doesn't have to wait for so long before you respond. As such, you not only have an efficient customer support team, but you can also accumulate an enviable population of happy customers. 

According to Forrester, almost 70% of customers want a service that prioritizes their time. With this metric, you’ll understand how you're faring in that regard. 

If you are dealing with low median first responses, automate your first responses as shown below.

However, this system only gives them the relief that their complaint has been logged. Now, it's up to your customer service team to act on the logged tickets. 

6. Net promoter score

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric shows the tendency of your customers to recommend your service or product. The NPS is revered as a terrific SaaS marketing campaign tool. But it’s just as excellent for customer support performance.

To use this metric, you have to send NPS customer satisfaction surveys to your customers. This is a single-question survey asking them about their customer loyalty. See an example of this in the image below:

The survey usually features answers that range from 0 to 10. 0 indicates a strong no, and 10 means extremely likely. Based on the customer surveys, you can group the customer feedback into three classes:

• Promoters: these are respondents that answer 9 or 10. These are the most likely to recommend your business.
• Passives: these respondents answer 7 or 8. They are okay with your services but not enough to recommend your brand.
• Detractors: these customers answer 0 to 6. They are unhappy and will not promote your brand.  

Once you have the percentage of these classes, apply the formula below.

You can then use the benchmark from the image below to see how you're faring.

A lower score means you have to elevate your customer experience. And your support teams are a vital piece of this. Reach out to promoters to discover the origin of their sense of connection. Work on this with your support service. Also, contact the detractors to understand how you can improve. 

Build a human connection with customers via your customer service representatives by offering an efficient, personalized, and outstanding customer service experience. 

In closing

The first step to producing satisfied customers is streamlining your customer support. However, you can't streamline your support without knowing what is working and what's not. This is where you'll find customer support metrics helpful. 

Some essential customer service metrics to track are ticket backlogs, customer retention rates, support ticket volume, answered call rates, median first responses, and net promoter score (NPS). 

When you track these key performance indicators, you'll become more in sync with the current state of your customer service teams. And as such, you'll understand what you need to address for superior performance.

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