Downtimes can affect your business in many ways, including reduced productivity, customer frustrations, and lost work hours, making incident management a critical part of any business.

That’s why a proper incident management plan must have a way of tracking its effectiveness. This guide offers a guide on critical incident management your organization should track and other critical metrics for ITIL.

Critical ITIL KPIs and Metrics

Tracking your metrics is the first step towards improving critical success factors such as customer satisfaction, business continuity initiatives, project management, and the overall performance of your organization’s IT service desk.

Besides tracking, you will need to implement a practical solution to solve problems identified by the metrics.

If you are new to incident management, this service desk software can help you follow ITIL best practices by eliminating barriers to employee support services to make your IT service desk achieve the highest level of efficiency possible.

Here are key ITIL KPIs and metrics.

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)

MTBF is the average time between one repairable failure of a repairable tech product and another. This metric measures a product’s reliability and effectiveness and should be a critical area to look at when you want to improve productivity.

This metric is also critical when making decisions like replacing a specific gadget. If the MTBF is lower than ideal for a specific repairable item, replacing it is the best course of action.

Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA)

MMTA is the average time between a system alert about a problem and when a team member acknowledges it and starts working on resolving it. This metric is critical in determining how well or poorly your team responds to problems.

Once you identify the MTTA, the next step would be digging up the reason behind the figure. High MTTA could indicate overburdened technicians, distractions, or unclear task assignments. Identifying these problems can then advise the most effective solution, for example, hiring more staff or streamlining communication and task assignments.

Mean Time to Detect (MTTD)

MTTD measures the mean time between an incident and when your team detects the problem. Often this metric is applied in incidences of system compromises due to a cyber-attack.

A high MTTD can mean a lot of trouble for a business because it can mean the difference between protecting your customer’s sensitive information and having it fall into the wrong hands.

The only way to ensure that your business’s MTTD stays as low as possible is to ensure that your team stays updated on emerging threats and incorporate tools that can help detect possible threats and notify your team before a threat causes damage.

Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)

MTTR, also referred to as mean time to resolve, measures the maintainability of a repairable item. It is the average time between when a technician starts work on an item to when they are done with the repairs.

This metric is best used diagnostically by checking the reason behind specific items MTTR. If it doesn’t meet expectations, you must dig deeper and identify the root causes of an elevated MTTR.

Some factors that can influence an item’s MTTR include the extent of the damage, your team’s skill set, and available resources for maintaining the problem. Based on your findings, you can then implement measures to improve it, such as employee training, facilitation, or replacing the item.

Availability (Excluding Planned Downtime)

This metric measures the actual uptime percentage relative to planned uptime in hours. To calculate planned uptime, you need to consider an item’s service hours minus planned downtime.

This metric is also referred to as service outage duration. The higher the availability, the more the efficiency of the subject item. Decreasing availability can signify a falling item which could also advise the decision to replace it.

Any type of large enterprise or organization knows the inherent value a virtual call center brings to their business.

These centers work a myriad of magic on an hourly basis — everything from handling your customers’ urgent needs to offering direct interaction for a caller with a more complex query that might not be easily solved with an automated solution.

However, not all customer service solutions are created equal. Today’s clients are no longer willing to put up with long wait times or a company that only offers one channel to get in touch through. To be successful, businesses need a high-quality call center service that is reliable, easy to navigate and able to keep up with ever-changing customer experience expectations.

So, if you’re looking into upgrading or implementing call center software, read on as we detail some important things to consider to make it a success.

Agent Metrics

Keep in mind that whatever agent is fielding calls, chatting through text or answering emails is usually the first point of contact between your business and a customer. So, while setting up your call center with powerful equipment and necessary staff is needed, it’s not always enough to bring you the customer service goals you want. For your call center service to be a success, your organization needs to be able to monitor its practices and performance. One way to do this is to use metrics to evaluate individual agent performance as well as key attributes of the entire customer service process.

Performance Monitoring Metrics to Measure

First-call resolution: When customers call a service center, they expect their issue to be handled on the first call. If your customer has to contact your business again to try and resolve their issue, customer retention rates are on the line. In fact, research shows a whopping 38 percent of customers will likely move on to another company if their issue isn’t solved after the first customer service call.

Service level and response time: Service level refers to the formula of “X percent of contacts answered in Y seconds,” and its outcome will depend on each company’s set targets. Response time also adheres to set targets and refers to the time it takes agents to complete or handle all customer inquiries. Both metrics are critical to helping sort out exactly how effective your call center is in your customer experience journey.

Implementing these metrics can help any organization guarantee effective performance monitoring and management of their call center, and ensure they achieve a high level of success which, of course, benefits your business as a whole.

Figure Out Functionality Needs

When it comes to deploying successful call center software, the functionality each product provides can vary a great deal. The first step is deciding what kind of features such as omnichannel or self-service automation you absolutely need to have, and which functions would be nice but not necessary. Once the non-negotiables have been set for functionality needs, research still needs to be conducted to ensure the compatibility of any company software into the call center platform.

The platforms that allow businesses to adopt applications modularly and as needed make it easier for companies to customize their customer service to their unique needs.

The biggest determination for your call center to be a success lies in understanding your customer base pain points, what they need to connect and which systems when in place will lead to an overall higher customer satisfaction score.

Because in the end, your customer satisfaction rate is the most comprehensive and direct way to tell if your center is providing the support your customer needs or not.

Customer experience (CX) has become a priority for the vast majority of organisations – or has it?

With the large volumes of contact center advisors still incentivized based on speed – typically the Average Handle Time (AHT) – CX goals are quite often unachievable.

Companies have two options: speed or quality. Get the customer off the phone or web chat as quickly as possible or deliver a business transformative level of customer service. You can’t have it both ways.

As Dino Forte, CEO, Ventrica, insists, if companies truly want to release the strategic CX objective, it is time to end the outdated focus on AHT and create a new culture that embeds quality, satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy metrics within contact center performance.

Quality versus Quantity

AHT has dominated contact center measurement for decades. During the era of low cost, low value service delivery, measuring advisors purely based on the speed with which a customer interaction could be wrapped up, irrespective of the quality of service or value of the experience, was the priority. But that model has little place in the customer centric market of 2019. At a time when the quality of customer experience is often the only opportunity to achieve any level of customer differentiation, the way in which organisations engage with customers – via social media or email, phone or web chat – is now critical.

So why are so many companies – many of which cite a strong commitment to CX – still buying contact center services on the basis of AHT? How can an advisor deliver the high quality experience required to meet customer expectations, to create a brand advocate or prompt recommendations via social media, when the focus is mostly on speed? The entire concept is counter-intuitive and counter-productive – and yet despite top level ‘Customer Experience’ focused strategies, when it comes to assessing contact center performance and purchasing outsourced contact center services, too many companies are still firmly entrenched in an outdated, speed based culture.

Clearly performance has to be evaluated and assessed to ensure value for money and quality of contact center operations – so how can organisations match contact center deliverables to corporate CX goals?

Cultural Conflict

The dichotomy within contact center services today is that not only is a speed focused model at odds with the stated CX focus, it is also at complete odds with the investment in a raft of metrics to measure the voice of the customer and customer experience across the business. From social media sentiment to routine customer surveys, according to Gartner, the four most common categories for CX metrics are quality, satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy and it is embedding these measures within a contact center culture that is key to achieving an environment that provides the right type of experience.

Of course, AHT still has a role to play. It is important to track traditional performance metrics, such as the number of dropped contacts, as well as contacts handled, to ensure basic operational processes are working correctly. Additionally, it’s useful from a resource planning perspective to help ensure staffing levels are calculated accurately and productivity levels are where they need to be. A spike in AHT can even provide an indication of an emerging problem within the business – such as a billing glitch – that requires rapid escalation. But it is no measure of quality or the company’s ability to deliver highly personalized services.

Companies need to be honest: what is the business delivering via a contact center? If there is any focus on CX, on ensuring customers receive a personalized resolution, then using AHT to incentivize contact center advisers is massively counter-intuitive. An individual measured solely on the speed with which every interaction is concluded is never going to have the time to listen to the customer, understand the problems or issues raised, or focus on the quality of the experience. The goal will be to wrap up calls or handle multiple web chats simultaneously to ensure the AHT metrics are hit – and that fundamentally undermines the basic concept of good customer experience.

Customer Experience Metrics

If companies are to ensure the corporate CX vision is delivered at the contact center, the culture has to change. This means embracing innovative technologies that enable customers to easily and effectively self-serve, freeing up contact center advisors to concentrate on the more complex customer issues. But it also means reconsidering advisor metrics; ensuring they are incentivized based on the quality of experience, first time resolution and customer voice; and providing the training required to enable individuals to make the transition towards a better quality interaction.

Essentially it means changing both processes and culture to ensure advisors become customer centric and that customers have timely access to the information or service required and, where possible, one touch resolution.

In addition to leveraging technology innovation to support self-service, achieving a CX focused culture may also demand changes to the recruitment model to ensure advisors match the profile and needs of the customers. While an AHT dominated model requires a vanilla approach to advisor recruitment, as soon as the focus shifts to CX it becomes essential to allocate individuals with the right skills to the job. From the high levels of empathy and great listening skills required by those primarily dealing with elderly and/or distressed individuals, to an inherent interest in fashion for an advisor working for a clothing company, great CX requires a far more tailored recruitment model.

Conclusion

Great service cannot be delivered by individuals focused solely on processing as many customer interactions as possible – the two requirements are completely at odds. Companies need to look hard at why they are still measuring contact center services on such an outdated model: AHT typically ties in with low cost, low value interactions.

With many more companies now realizing the fundamental importance of providing great service, is it not now essential to rethink the way these services are delivered by embedding customer experience within the culture?

About the Author

Dino Forte is CEO of the multichannel, multilingual contact center outsourcing business Ventrica – customer service partner of choice for some of the world’s best known brands.

The approach to customer service has completely shifted in recent years. Now, 54% of customers have higher expectations for customer service compared to one year ago, which has left many organizations reviewing their operations to meet targets.

However, no two organizations are the same. Each has their own targets to meet and challenges to face, so making data-driven decisions is key. With the consumer journey now favouring omnichannel touchpoints, strategies must act on key metrics whilst still lowering the cost of every interaction.

Enter call tracking – which bridges the gap between sales calls and advertising spend. Call tracking makes it possible to monitor exactly which online marketing channels are driving phone calls and customers to your business.

Here are four reasons why larger businesses need call tracking to meet customer service targets:

1. See the Customer Lifetime Value

Understanding the lifetime value of a customer is crucial to encouraging repeat business. After all, encouraging current customers to re-purchase is easier as they have lower associated costs and are likelier to give higher satisfaction ratings. This metric is usually calculated through average order value, purchase frequency and customer time length.

However, the path to purchase is complex with consumers switching between online and offline channels before becoming a sale. So omnichannel tracking is necessary.

If 70% of consumers phone your business directly from a search results page, it’s clear your online marketing is driving offline sales. But how can you track an individual customer’s lifetime journey to prove their value?

Call tracking from providers such as  Mediahawk tracks all online to offline interactions, providing seamless information on the entire customer journey.

For example, if you send an email to an existing customer promoting a new product and they decide to call directly from your listed phone number, it’s clear this online marketing channel is driving over-the-phone conversions. You can then calculate how valuable these interactions and conversions are from lifetime customers.

2. Retention and Return Rates

Consumer expectations have changed drastically. Our patience has weakened with on-demand services (social media, email, live chat) and we expect instant results.

But in the day and age where it is 9x more expensive to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one, meeting customer immediacy is a must for improving retention and return rates.

There’s still a perception among customers that filling out contact forms or sending an email means waiting days for a response. They know a phone call can resolve a query in minutes compared to a week’s worth of emails.

Considering that improving customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 95%, you could be exceeding your customer service targets by huge margins.

Call tracking software helps your sales team close more deals and negotiate higher value sales. Once you know which channels are driving calls and where an individual customer is in the buyer journey, you can draw conclusions and improve the way your team communicates. This might be through adjusting your over the phone offering to meet specific caller’s needs.

Having this information available aids the call handler’s ability to meet the caller’s needs through better service, making the customer likelier to buy again.

3. Preferred Communication Channel of Final Conversion

Because of the digital world, consumers now expect quick responses and have communication preferences. Identifying these preferences is a crucial metric for customer satisfaction, especially when the final conversion turns a lead into a sale.

This will vary from enterprise to enterprise, as different purchases will require different forms of communication.

For example, expensive purchases (e.g. a holiday or a car) will require more in-depth conversations, making customers likelier to close sales over the phone, whereas an enquiry over a product’s availability could be answered quickly over social media or live chat.

Call tracking monitors which channels customers are most likely to complete purchases on. Your enterprise can use this data to plug resources into optimizing these channels and guarantee the highest conversion rate possible.

For example, if you identify that a considerable number of leads are converting over the phone after downloading an eBook, you could create more eBooks to target specific industries and widen your customer base.

4. Personalize the Customer Experience by Tracking Offline Conversations

As consumers are jumping across online channels to the phone and back, your sales representatives need to know exactly where a caller has been, who they are and, most importantly, why they are calling. Without this information the chances of achieving a sale are greatly reduced.

By personalizing the customer experience, leads will feel more valued and be more focused on making a purchase, which is why 94% of large enterprises worldwide are using their customer data to deliver personalized experiences.

Call tracking analytics generate real-time insights about each caller. Your sales team can view information on the customer they’re communicating with, such as the page they landed on, the keywords they used to find your website and if they have called before. You’ll be able to tailor conversations to specific customers and close more deals.

This can also be used to automatically route and filter callers, so they are sent to the correct person or department, eliminating call transfers.

For instance, if you were a retail company with a customer who had an item of clothing in their basket, but they decided to call before completing their purchase, they would be directed to the correct sales representative to help complete the sale.

Together this all forms a frictionless customer journey. Customers will feel reassured that you know exactly what they want and happy customers lead to better conversion rates.

Although larger enterprises have a bigger market share, they can still suffer from the difficulty of reaching customer service targets. However, by introducing call tracking, your business can gain comprehensive customer insights, guaranteeing that you are using the best omnichannel marketing strategies to increase customer satisfaction and sales.

About the Author

Natalia Selby is Marketing coordinator at Mediahawk, with over 10 years experience in analytics, content management and eCommerce.

Customer satisfaction is what differentiates you from your competition.

I catch myself saying this pretty often to my colleagues and to my readers. Customer satisfaction, has gained a lot of importance in the last few years. Customers have begun to expect a lot more from companies and brands than just a trouble-free purchase. With plenty of companies sprouting every other minute, customer loyalty is a hard win. Organizations have to constantly work to ensure that customer satisfaction trumps company profits. Every single time.

Not convinced yet? Let’s look at a few numbers and stats.

• By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key differentiator between brands.
• One happy customer can equal as many as 9 referrals for your business.
• Great customer experience can lift revenue by up to 15%.
• Maximizing customer experience can lower the cost of serving customers by as much as 20%.
• 74% of consumers have spent more due to good customer service.
• 86% of buyers would pay more for a better customer experience.
• 56% of global consumers say they have higher expectations for customer service now than they had just one year ago.

Source: www.garyefox.com

Source:https://marketoonist.com/

Everyone is a Customer Support Unicorn

Back in the days, organizations had separate teams for customer service that helped answer customer questions. But we still have support teams to run the show even today. What’s changed? Employees are encouraged to become customer engagement agents. Customer support agents are encouraged to sell or market products in a way that doesn’t sound promotional. Roles of people from different functions are diverging; everyone within an organization is becoming aware of the importance of customer experience to brand health. Companies are also adopting advanced customer support tactics such as implementing omnichannel support or identifying and solving customer issues even before they become pressing problems.

What Cannot be Measured, Cannot be Managed

Now that you know the importance of customer satisfaction, your next course of action is to put a plan together on how to incorporate it into your support strategy. And to do that, you need to identify and measure a few key customer support metrics. From our experience as a customer support software company, here are four key metrics that we think you should measure.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

That’s a no-brainer. If you are measuring customer success then the first place to start would be the CSAT score. It is necessary to measure this metric so that you can identify what’s lagging and how you can fix it. When you fix this in the product or service, it will result in happy customer. And when customers are happy, they share their positive experience with other people. This builds trust in your prospects because 92% of prospects trust recommendations from other customers. Another important benefit is lower churn. With every 5% increase in retention your profitability goes up by 25-95%.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

One other closely related metric that you need to include when measuring customer experience is the net promoter score or NPS. This is usually confused with the CSAT score. While CSAT is only about customer satisfaction ratings, the NPS is a combination of customer ratings and free-form customer feedback. You are essentially asking your customers whether or not they will take the time to share positive reviews about your business. This feedback comes in through surveys that you take after a customer interaction. Since this is a free-form feedback, customers have the space to detail their experience or expectations from your business. Using this information you can build a better product experience and customer interaction.

When creating a survey, you need to create a strong survey program that will effectively gather the required information or feedback from your customer. Sometimes, all it takes is one question.

Churn

Most of the decision-makers in an organization will argue that churn is the most important metric, particularly if you are a SaaS company. Though there are many ways to calculate churn, it is essentially the percentage of customers who turn away from doing business with you. Nearly 86% of companies are focused on acquiring new customers. But in truth, the cost of acquiring a new customer is greater than the cost of retaining an existing customer. Churn rate helps you identify how much effort you need to put into retention and gives you insights on how you can improve your customers’ experiences.

How to Consistently Maintain 98% CSAT

Make your customers the focus of your interactions. Provide quick resolution. Follow up and close the loop on conversations with customers. Use a good helpdesk software. These are things that you already know and might have implemented them in your support processes. Here are four out of the box ideas that you can use to up your customer satisfaction score and consistently stay at it.

Avoid excessive use of canned responses

Though this might be easy to improve first response time for your agents, it does not work in favor of customer satisfaction. Your customers know when they receive a canned response no matter how personalized you make them. Use them sensibly.

Quick responses vs quick quality responses

Common wisdom has it that it’s necessary to respond to customer queries as quickly as you can. But that doesn’t mean you have to shoot for the moon. If the stress is on quicker responses, your agents might succumb to the pressure of responding quickly but the quality of their support will take a hit. Always remember that it’s quality before speed.

Automate processes with care

Automation takes a whole lot of load off your agents. Manual repeat processes like ticket allocation, auto response, can work wonders for teams that focus on time management. But automation has its pitfalls as well. You need to take the time to scrutinize every process that you automate so that customer tickets do not end up with the wrong support agent or team.

Be proactive

If you were a customer, what would your next question about a specific issue be? This is what is commonly known as forward resolving where you anticipate what the customers’ next question will be. And then you proactively offer it as a solution even before it is asked. This adds an element of pleasant surprise to the customer’s interaction and has a positive impact on their experience.

In Closing

The ideas that I have mentioned are not limited. You can get as creative as you can to come up with ideas that will help you consistently wow your customers and in turn, help you maintain a good customer satisfaction score. If you have done something out of the box and has worked well for you, share them as comments here.

Happy supporting!

About the Author

Monica Maria is the Content Marketing Manager at Freshworks. She has a profound knowledge on the ticketing system and its functioning which makes her voice about it often. When she is not charting out content strategies, you can find her reading Sci-fi, doodling, or taking photographs. You can
connect with her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

It might sound quick and simple to say how well your business does in satisfying it’s customers.

Hearing such as “We’re increasing our turnover by 14% year to date” or “Our customer complaints are now less than 4%” might sound like music to your ears, but that’s just the time you need to be very careful.

A regular measurement of where you are as your organisation, not depending on some of the easy-to-fake figures, might just make the difference in how well you are doing now, and into the future.

Try these quality statements and set up a mechanism whereby you review them monthly. This needs to be thorough and objective. And maybe even the scores made by a cross- section of your people in all areas of your business – then you get objectivity and a true picture of how you are scoring. It is a great activity to score each of these out of 10, make a tracker month by month and each time you review, ask yourself the question:-

“What would we need to do to move our score up by 3 points”
Do it point by point and then, after you have that 3-point question, work out a monthly action plan, so that step-by-step, you gradually improve. (Note:- If you are too near a score out of 10 to have three points to go – upgrade your statement!).

Then and only then will your improvement be sustainable and you can reset the questions over time to a higher standard. Then you truly will be The Best in class!

The Quality Statements:

• We use a variety of staff to monitor customer service on a regular and consistent basis
• We know and can clearly state our customer groups
• We listen to customers about our products and proactively seek to redress issues
• We notice and congratulate our people and teams when they perform well
• Senior management are fully and visibly engaged in customer activities
• Our people enjoy the challenge of changes
• Our organisation and our people have aligned values
• Our customers find working with us easy and pleasurable
• We know how our people feel about working here and always respond to make it better
• We have teams and individuals who can respond quickly to changes circumstances, whatever they are

Keep a track of these – visually represent it somewhere very publicly for your people. Involve many of your them in monitoring, finding solutions and taking accountability for change, where needed and your business, your people and you will thrive.

One final point. Starting is good, being able to demonstrate your success in 12 months is another thing – as is still doing this review at that time.

About the Author

Martin Haworth is a Business and Management Coach. He works worldwide, mainly by phone, with small business owners, managers and corporate leaders.

When it comes to measuring the success of your customer service operation choosing the right set of metrics is essential.

By creating a Balanced Scorecard made up of your most important deliverables you will be able to track your clients’ satisfaction and report stakeholders’ key success factors.

The Balanced Scorecard was created by Harvard Business School Professor Robert Kaplan and Renaissance Solutions President David Norton and includes financial and non-financial indicators.

A balanced scorecard system can be incorporated, as it aims to align key performance indicators (KPIs) with the organization’s strategy, keep management informed of business operations, enable communication and understanding of goals at all levels and facilitate feedback and learning..

To get started you need to identify the metrics that are most important to your stakeholders. To do this you will need to understand the goals and objectives of your organization. By keeping these metrics at a high level they will be of interest to senior executives.

At an operational level you may want to create a process map which clearly identifies not only customer touch points, but internal ones to. You will then be able to incorporate your key performance indicators.

Here are some examples of customer service metrics at an operational level in a contact centre.

Average handle time, average talk time, average whole time, agent productivity, rework, number of escalations, agent turnover, schedule adherence, case management time, first call resolution rate or FCR, time to resolution.

Obviously these operational metrics need to be customized for your business. In addition to call centre or contact centre performance measurement, other useful metrics can include number of complaints received, complaint handling time, on-time delivery success, number of damages and returns, number of billing errors.

Do not over focus on measuring quantity when it comes to call time. A mistake that some managers often make is to measure the call ‘wrap up’ time. It’s not always the best policy to keep incoming calls as short as possible. Sometimes long calls build the best customer rapport and result in more loyal customers.

One company that doesn’t focus on call time is Zappos. Famous for customer service excellence, Zappos encourages its customers to talk with them, sometimes for hours. The key here is choosing the metrics that are right not just for you, but your clients too.

When creating your metrics take a look at your industry standards. By benchmarking organizations in a similar industry to yours, you will be able to gather additional ideas. For example in the airline industry, key performance indicators may include departure times, lost baggage, and customer satisfaction.

If you really want to keep things simple, take a look at the net promoter score. NPS is quite possibly the ultimate customer service metric as it asks and measures only one question. That question is “how likely are you to recommend us to your friend/colleague?” This is also referred to by some companies as the recommended index.

Be sure to include the human factors, i.e. soft metrics when creating your balanced scorecard. Don’t underestimate the importance of people when it comes to performance measurement.

Finally, and probably the most important point of all, always make sure that your customer service metrics are aligned with your customers’ needs.