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Interview Patty

117 - How To Improve Customer Satisfaction And Avoid Metric Overwhelm

Customer satisfaction is the lifeblood of your business. Here’s why:

  • It is 6 to 7 times more costly to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing customer (White House Office of Consumer Affairs)
  • 55% of consumers who intend to make a purchase back out because of poor customer service (American Express AXP +0.00%)
  • 40% of customers begin purchasing from a competitor because of their reputation for great customer service (Zendesk)

1. Monitor your customer satisfaction.
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Monitor your customer satisfaction ‘pulse’, but try not to go overboard. When you track a lot metrics, it feels like you have more visibility and therefore, control. This is an illusion. You might overwhelm your team members and disappoint your customers.

In this post, I’ll explain how avoiding ‘metric overwhelm’ can improve customer satisfaction in your business.

One lazy Saturday morning, I was researching the features of my credit card. I started a live chat session online with my credit card provider and within 60 seconds, the agent had answered my questions and helped me find exactly what I was looking for. Then, I realized something while reviewing the terms of my existing card. I was ready to upgrade!

This was a win/win situation. The card was perfect for my needs and would generate more revenue for the credit card company. There was one wrinkle in the process. The agent terminated the chat before I had a chance to say thank you. I didn’t get to upgrade, either.

If the chat agent waited just 10 more seconds, I could have become a more valuable customer. I would have left a glowing review, instead of nothing. What should have been a wonderful experience degraded into another ho-hum transaction.

2. Why?
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The list below samples common performance metrics in customer service and customer success teams:

  • Average handle time
  • Average wait time
  • Contacts per hour
  • Cross-sells
  • Customer health score
  • Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
  • First contact resolution
  • Net promoter score (NPS)
  • Net retention
  • Number of escalations
  • Number of repeat contacts
  • Occupancy
  • Response time
  • Time to customer value
  • Upsells
  • Voice of customer (VOC)

3. Other metrics.

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There are dozens of other metrics, including confusing acronyms like TBBB and ACW. The point?

To quote my business partner, Nils Vinje: “When it comes to customer success – you can drive satisfaction or drive revenue, but you can’t drive both.” This point applies to any customer-facing business: you need to be crystal clear on exactly what you’re driving towards.

I wanted to learn more about my credit card provider, so I pored over hundreds of Glassdoor employee reviews. I discovered a recurring complaint about their internal policies. Past and present customer service team members echoed the same sentiment: “There are too many conflicting metrics and targets.”

Over the last 15 years, I’ve seen everything from balanced scorecards with eight equally weighted metrics to high-tech management dashboards that look like they belong in a SpaceX cockpit. While these tools can seem helpful, they can be over-engineered solutions to a very simple problem.

It’s almost impossible for a team to optimize for a specific business outcome when eight metrics are equally weighted. Instead of laser focus on a particular driver like increasing satisfaction or expanding revenue, you end up with a scatter-gun approach that confuses your team and neutralizes your leader. It’s also incredibly hard to create a team identity and call to arms, when no-one can remember their targets.

4. Three things in common.
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The highest-performing teams I’ve worked with have three things in common:

  1. They are managed to between one and three metrics
  2. They are kept very accountable to these metrics
  3. They can recite their metrics with their eyes closed

The live chat agent did a satisfactory job, but was let down by trying to satisfy too many metrics. They answered most of my questions and likely did so while juggling ten other customer enquiries. Unfortunately, this isn’t good enough.

Read the original article here: Forbes

All the best!

Patty Block

Building Blocks

7941 Katy Fwy. #414
Houston, TX 77024 USA

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