General CX

CX metrics part 5: Customer service metrics

Learn how to harness customer service metrics to explore your CS efficiency, strengthen your customer relationships, and provide a better customer experience. This is the fifth article in our six-part CX metrics series.

Customer service metrics play an important role in cementing strong customer relationships. It’s been said that great customer service can turn a poor brand encounter into a positive experience. In truth, you can’t have great CX without great customer service.

We recently discussed usability metrics and their impact on the customer experience. Now, let’s delve into the customer service metrics that have the most relevance to CX.

Key customer service metrics

Even if you’re not familiar with the individual CS metrics themselves, you’re probably familiar with the concept of customer service metrics. This is one area where quantitative measurements (e.g. resolution time, response time) are commonly talked about. And the reasoning is simple: the faster and more effective the customer service, the happier the customer! 

1. Customer complaints (aka number of complaints, tickets, calls, etc.) refer to the number of complaints received, support tickets opened, etc. in a designated timeframe. You can also calculate the average number of complaints per month, quarter, etc. This information is an important benchmark for the quality and fit of your product or service.
2. Response time measures the average time that passes between the customer’s action and your company’s response; this can apply at any stage in the process. Shorter times are better. First reply time is the response time specifically for the customer’s initial outreach. This metric can also be applied to specific channels, e.g. email response time, chat response time, etc.
3. Resolution time (aka mean time to resolution or time to resolve) tracks the average time needed to solve a customer’s problem. It includes all the time that passes between the customer’s initial outreach to the final resolution.
4. Ticket reopens reflect the number of customer support tickets that were reopened after being marked as resolved. In other words, it’s the number of times the customer was unsatisfied with the original solution. A higher number indicates some inefficiency or disconnect in the customer service process. 
5. Agent touches (aka replies per ticket or replies per resolution) measure how many times one or more agents perform some kind of action in the course of resolving a complaint. Common agent touches include opening a ticket, replying to an email, chatting with the customer, etc. A consistently high number of agent touches is worth investigating. It’s also worth noting how often multiple departments or teams get involved in the resolution process.
6. Repeat customer rate measures how many customers keep doing business with your company. This isn’t strictly a customer service metric, but it provides vital if indirect information on how well your customer service team is doing.
7. Repeat complaint rate tracks how often the same type of complaint is filed by different customers. (A repeat customer complaint rate measures how often the same customer files a complaint – about the same problem or any other issue.) A high repeat complaint rate usually requires reevaluating your customer service policies or systems.

Customer service metrics and the customer experience

Customer service metrics give you an important insight into an invaluable area of your customer experience; they can help you identify areas where the CS process is slow or inefficient. 

If you do a bit more digging, these metrics can help you assess why customer service is faltering. Do teams need better tools? More training? More support and data from other teams? Once you understand what’s working – and what isn’t – in your customer service playbook, you can make the needed changes to level up the customer experience during a critical moment in their journey.

There’s one more critical part  of a great customer experience: employees. In the final article of this CX metrics series, we’ll examine ways to measure employee satisfaction, engagement, and effectiveness.