What Common Mistakes Are Made When Choosing Customer Service Metrics?

There’s a wide range of metrics of factors that can be measured to determine customer service quality. Unfortunately, many companies actually choose the wrong ones to measure, or make some logical errors, rendering the data they collect potentially misleading.

One common mistake is to assume that metrics are disconnected from each other. For example, it’s been common, in the call center industry, to assess customer service quality (both on a corporate and individual employee level), by counting the number of calls processed in any given time period. The assumption being that the more calls handled, the better the quality of service.

That’s not a completely wrong assumption, but it’s incomplete. The number of calls handled may reflect customer service quality, or it may reflect the exact opposite. Imagine a call center that provides such poor service that people don’t want to deal with them (this happens fairly frequently). What you’d get is shorter calls, more calls processed in a given time, but for the wrong reason. Obviously you may want more calls handled, but you also need to measure customer satisfaction at the same time. That’s because number of calls handled, in and of itself, does not necessarily reflect customer service quality.

So, one major mistake is to use too few indicators related to customer service quality.

A second mistake is there is a tendency to use customer service quality metrics that are easy to measure, but may be relatively unimportant to the perceptions of the customer.

The third mistake is a very serious one. The metrics chosen to assess quality customer service tend to tell employees what is and is not important. So choosing the wrong metrics can encourage staff to do the wrong things. Again, with our call center situation, if employees and the call center are measured on the number of calls they process during a given time, it pushes employees to rush customer interactions, and can actually lower customer service quality.

It’s important to choose metrics that are sufficient in scope and number, are relevant to customer’s perceptions, and send the right message to employees about what is and is not customer service quality.

See Also: Is It Possible To Measure or Assess Excellent Customer Service?