Customer service analytics is the process of capturing and analysing customer data to generate valuable insights. This data may be collected from various points in the customer journey, including emails, purchase history, survey responses, returns and demographics. With this information, companies can make informed decisions about marketing and sales, product development, and customer experience.
Customer service analytics are essential because the data clearly identifies areas for improvement and growth. Customer service analytics allow you to measure valuable metrics, from customer satisfaction to brand awareness and customer loyalty.
Customers are the cornerstone of any business; customer service analytics will enable you to really get to know your customers and understand how you can improve their experience of your company. Let’s look at the top six customer service analytics you should track.
Knowing which customer service metrics should be tracked and how to use these insights is the first step in customer service analytics. There are six key metrics every business should be monitoring:
The Customer Satisfaction Score (or CSAT for short) tells you how satisfied customers are with your product, service or experience. This can be measured through a CSAT Score, which gives you a customer’s level of satisfaction. This is a beneficial tool and can be used to measure customer satisfaction throughout the customer journey.
To gather CSAT metrics, surveys can be deployed at various customer engagement points: customer service ticket exchange, during checkout, a customer service call, or during the onboarding process. By measuring CSAT at these multiple points, companies can be clear about areas of improvement.
Net Promoter Score tells you how likely your customers are to recommend your company to friends and family. Businesses with a high net promoter score benefit from referrals, brand loyalty and free word-of-mouth marketing. If your NPS is low, it’s a sign that your customers are not pleased and may be open to switching to a competitor.
Net Promoter Score is a standard benchmark used globally. It can be measured by asking customers: “On a scale of 0-10, how likely is it that you would recommend us to friends, colleagues or business associates?”
Anyone who answers eight or above is considered a promoter. Anyone that answers below a six is regarded as a detractor. To calculate your Net Promoter Score, use the following formula: NPS = % of answers that were Promoters – % of responses that were Detractors = NPS
Customer Effort Score (CES) tells you how much effort is required of your customers to find information, resolve a query, or use a product or service. Your CES is a good benchmark for how effectively your customer service agents solve customer problems. It’s an essential metric because if customers feel they can’t quickly solve their problems or use your service, they’re more likely to leave you for a competitor.
To discover your CES, ask customers who have had their tickets closed: “How easy was it to resolve your issue?” Answers should be recorded on a scale from: very difficult, difficult, neither, easy, and very easy.
To calculate your CES, use the formula: CES = % of positive replies – % of negative replies. A low score spells trouble and can prompt you to look for ways to ease the customer journey so that it is smooth and effortless for the customer. This way, they are far more likely to enjoy your customer experience and stay on to become loyal customers.
Average ticket resolution measures how long a customer service team takes to resolve the average customer support ticket. Measuring average ticket resolution time tells you much about your customer service experience. A slow average ticket resolution time means customers are kept waiting, which is not good for business. Slow response times can cause customers to feel dissatisfied and prompt them to look for a brand that offers better service.
To calculate your average ticket resolution time, use the following formula:
Average Ticket Resolution Time = Total time to resolve all tickets / Total number of tickets resolved.
Average time to first reply measures the length of time it takes your business to respond to an initial email or message from a customer. Do you know what your average time to first reply is? If you do not know, you cannot improve it.
Average time to first reply is a key metric for customer service teams because customers notice when their query is not prioritised. Keeping your average time to first reply low can be a competitive advantage — only 36% of companies reply to incoming queries within an hour of receiving them. Focusing on this metric can ensure you win over customers and close more deals.
To calculate your average time to first reply, use the formula: Average Time To First Reply = Total time of first replies / Number of tickets replied to.
Average time to reply (TTR) is the average time it takes the customer service team to respond to incoming emails and queries. Average time to reply is critical to business success. Customers who email your business expect a reply within 24 to 48 hours. Take too long to respond, and customers are bound to choose a competitor who is quicker to reply.
Measuring average time allows business owners to understand how well customer service team members perform against set benchmarks. By monitoring response times, managers can spot problem areas and bottlenecks to improve reply times.
Rather than manually measuring this key customer service metric, use timetoreply. Once installed, timetoreply displays a dashboard populated with all essential customer service and email metrics.
To calculate your time to reply, use the formula: Average time to reply = total sum of time to reply to all emails / total emails replied to
Customer experience is a critical factor for business success. To deliver a consistently excellent customer experience, start by improving your customer service response time. Good customer service response times build loyalty and positively impact purchasing decisions. Here are our top tips for improving customer service response time.
Define goals and benchmarks
Customer service teams perform well when they know their response time targets and can quickly see how their performance measures up. timetoreply Optimiser helps individuals optimise their email performance by giving individual users visibility of their response times compared to their team’s.
Remember, response time targets should be realistic and set against industry standards. Not sure what the industry benchmarks are? Read our blog, Average Email Response Time Per Industry, to learn more.
Prioritise emails according to their SLA
It can be hard to keep track of all the emails and messages waiting for a response. A tool like timetoreply Optimiser helps team members determine which email to respond to next. timetoreply Optimiser prioritises emails according to how close it is to a custom SLA threshold preventing SLAs from being breached.
If an email does go past the response time goal in the SLA, timetoreply Optimiser will turn the time remaining to red for 30 minutes to highlight this email and ensure the user responds. Support your customer service team with this kind of visibility and ensure your team responds to the correct email within the agreed timeframe.
Use specialist software to track and measure
Customer service software can make everyone’s life easier and more effective. A specialist tech tool like timetoreply will help your business improve its response time by automating processes and workflows. The timetoreply Optimiser add-on allows users to track and measure key customer service metrics. Plus, you can easily set targets and measure team performance. Don’t leave it all to chance when timetoreply Optimser can help you keep track of it.
Customer service email software can help you track and measure all necessary metrics.
Customer service email software gives you the visibility to make the changes required to improve your customer service experience.
Since it is automated, it can do this for you quickly, providing analytic dashboards highlighting key performance issues that need to be addressed.
timetoreply is the only customer service solution compatible with all email service providers. It is a powerful customer service tool perfect for teams looking to improve their customer service levels and boost deal closure rates. timetoreply provides vital reporting and analytics functionality for teams operating in any email environment.
timetoreply is quick to deploy with no installation required. Within minutes of activation, gain access to actionable insights. Drive efficiency by measuring reply times of team members, email volumes and peak hours. Set benchmarks and measure individual team members’ performance. Empower your team by enabling automatic real-time alerts, so they never miss an important email deadline again.
The tool is so effective that our customers have improved their response times from 7 to 2 hours. We have helped companies increase their response rates from 65% to 90%+ within 8 hours of activating timetoreply.
Contrary to other customer service email management solutions, timetoreply can be activated in Gmail and Outlook email environments without disrupting workflow.
There are six key customer service metrics to measure. By measuring each of these, your business can understand where improvements need to be made. You can improve customer loyalty, retention, and net promoter score by focusing on customer service response times. This can be hard to do, especially when you have many emails, tickets, queries and messages coming in.
Empower and support your customer service teams with specialist tech software, such as timetoreply to improve productivity and to ultimately in prove animal resposne
Try timetoreply for a free 15-day trial to see what the power of customer service software can do for your business.
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