A few weeks ago a friend of mine who is a Customer Service Manager called me with an interesting question…
“How do I do Customer Service Reports and what should I include?”
She had been asked for a detailed report by her boss and she felt stranded.
Here is the thing…
Providing great customer experience is no longer an option but rather a necessity if your business is to gain a competitive edge over your competitors.
As a business, you want to ensure that your customers have a positive feeling each and every time they interact with your brand at different touchpoints on their customer journey.
This starts from the time they research your product/ service on the internet, at the point of sale, during the purchase process, after purchase, and the interaction with service and support teams.
The business environment today is extremely competitive…
That said, the key to success and growth of a business is highly dependent on delivering exceptional customer experience.
Therefore, a majority of the business focus has shifted to customer service reports as one of their approaches to help improve and sustain high support standards by using the data received to evaluate and enhance customer experience performance.
Customer service is the new marketing and while providing high-quality products and/or service is important, the modern customer is calling the shots today and they expect more from a brand.
For a long time,
Customer service was not regarded as an important function of the business but with the adoption of technology, customer service can be tracked and measured.
It is now possible to generate reports that take into account key performance indicators as well as customer service metrics. The data then needs to be analyzed to get actionable insights that can be used to improve customer service strategies and boost revenue growth.
Let’s dive into it…
What Customer Service Reports?
They are dashboards or documents that offer great insights into the different facets of customer service operations. The reports are generated from raw customer data from customer feedback, support interactions, and key performance metrics.
A customer service report could also be defined as a presentation of customer service metrics that gauge the overall performance of the customer service team and can assist in tracking the progress to meeting customer service goals and identifying areas for improvement.
Benefits of Customer Service Reports
To enhance the customer experience, most organizations use customer service reports to make data-backed decisions to improve their operations. This is the reason why:
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Measuring & Monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
It is important for the customer service department to set goals and benchmarks as well as track the progress in achieving the objectives to deliver exceptional customer experience.
Whereas each metric offers beneficial information on its own, the manager needs to narrow down to specific metrics that will provide crucial information that aligns with the long-term business strategy.
The most common metrics include ticket volumes, response times, customer satisfaction scores, customer churn rate as well as first-call resolution rates.
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Personalizing & Tailoring Customer Service
The modern customer today is technology savvy and very empowered and they expect brands to offer high-quality customer service.
These customers have access to multiple options of alternative businesses from which they could engage if one business does not deliver to their expectations. Businesses have then had to personalize their service offering to deliver an outstanding customer experience.
To achieve this, businesses are using customer reports that offer great insights about their customers such as their behaviors, preferences, and previous interactions with the business which they can utilize to provide tailor-made experiences.
For instance, a company that proactively offers troubleshooting resources to a customer who frequently reaches out to customer support in regards to a particular product or service has personalized their interaction with their customer who then feels valued and trusts the brand.
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Revealing Pain Points & Areas of Improvement
Customer service reports help in identifying challenges for both the customer and the customer service agents. Businesses can efficiently determine the issues that the users are experiencing and proactively come up with possible solutions.
For instance, when checking the resolved ticket count and noticing that the number of resolved tickets is lower than usual, it could be an indication that the customer representatives are having a difficult time-solving customer issues.
As a manager, you could then find out if more workforce or better resources is required to speed up their pace.
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Proactively Resolving Issues
We have established that customer service reports can also be used to identify issues and challenges for both the customer and the agents.
However, with predictive analytics, an organization can evaluate historical data and proactively take up preventative measures to solve problems even before they affect the experience of the customer.
Take for example reviewing data that shows customers are spending less time engaging with a product. It could indicate that there is potential for customer churn and in such a case, a business could try and retain them by adopting retention approaches.
This could perhaps be providing special offers or dedicated short-term support to improve the customer experience.
Evaluating data from customer service reports provides great insights into both team and individual performance. This information can be used to identify and draft targeted training programs.
This in turn will improve the team’s as well as individual customer service representative’s knowledge and skill enabling them to deliver improved customer service support resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction.
Useful customer service reports are those that capture the right key performance indicators, subsequently assisting the business to understand the customer experience they provide and hence achieve customer satisfaction goals.
Key Customer Service Reports
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Number of Requests/ Tickets Received
This report simply shows the number of requests that have come in over a period of time which could be daily, weekly, or monthly requests. This metric can be used by managers to determine the workforce numbers needed to handle all the customer requests that come in.
This report can also be used to measure the efficiency of the team by evaluating the number of tickets received over some time against the number of issues resolved at the same time. It is, however, important to keep in mind that there could be other factors affecting their productivity.
This report equally helps to track trends in customer service which offers valuable information that can be used by managers:
- In planning and assigning tasks to customer service agents.
- To figure out where extra support may be needed by the number of requests received through various channels
- In identifying which are the busiest days and ensuring adequate staffing for such days
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Number of Requests Closed Per Agent
This report offers an overview of how many requests each user has closed. The report can be used to gauge the measure the performance of individual customer service agents, allowing you to identify how productive each agent is and how many requests they can handle.
Automating the process of picking up customer requests is ideal so that no agent will “cherry-pick” the easier requests which would enable them to respond to many more requests than their colleagues.
If an agent seems to answer only a few requests compared to the rest of the team, then that could be an indication that they could be struggling. It is important to reach out and find out what the issue could be and offer ideas on how to improve. A refresher training could come in handy.
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Average Response Time
It is important to measure how long the customer service team is taking to respond to the customers because most customers regard quick problem-solving as one of the key aspects of great customer service.
The average response time is the average time taken by your customer service agents to respond to customer requests. It is calculated by dividing the total time taken to respond to requests by the total number of requests received.
This metric helps determine if the team is assisting customers promptly to meet their customer expectations. Monitoring this metric helps identify possible barriers in the processes set up and assists in improving the responsiveness of your team.
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Time to Full Resolution
This metric tracks the average time it takes to resolve customer issues. The time is measured immediately after the customer reports an issue or sends an inquiry, and only stops when the ticket is finally resolved and closed.
Customers want not only a quick response but they also want their issues handled quickly. Take for instance a traveler who wants to change their travel date.
The customer service agent receives the passenger’s call at 9 am, helps them make the change, and issues a new revised ticket at 9:10 am. The issue was then handled in 10 minutes. If there is a rise in resolution time, it could be an indication that efficiency is dropping.
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First Contact Resolution
This report measures the percentage of customer inquiries or issues that agents successfully resolve right at the first interaction.
Customers of course prefer to deal with a single agent who will be in a position to assist them by responding to their questions and providing accurate information.
Customer service agents often have to address all the issues raised by a customer while taking account of any follow-up question that may come up, in the very first interaction and this is no mean feat!
A high first-contact resolution is an indication of efficiency by the customer service team in providing prompt resolutions. It shows the team is skilled to address customer issues hence reducing customer efforts and improving the customer’s experience.
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Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score(NPS)
Many businesses today are keen to find out if their customers are satisfied with their service offerings. CSAT is a common metric used by the majority of companies to measure customer satisfaction for a specific interaction or overall experience.
CSAT uses a survey or rating scale where customers are asked to rate how satisfied they are with the service rendered. Often customers rate their experience with a specific agent, with a product or service, and sometimes the brand as a whole.
CSAT provides a deeper understanding of the progress of a company in meeting customer expectations and aids in identifying areas for improvement.
NPS measures your customer satisfaction and loyalty. It seeks to identify how likely your customers are to recommend your brand to others. It usually has three categories of customers; Promoters, Passives and Detractors.
Promoters are those very happy customers who are highly likely to recommend your brand. Passives are generally satisfied but not likely to recommend your brand while detractors will not encourage others to patronize your business.
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Quality Assurance Reports
In any business set up, it is crucial not only to ensure that the quality of service given is up to standard. This is done by assessing customer interactions.
The assessments can be done randomly across all touch points or they can also be channel specific like call monitoring, email, social media or chats.
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Root-Cause Analysis and Escalation Reports
Looking into the root causes of recurrent customer complaints and seeking sustainable solutions. Escalation reports on the other hand provide detailed information on cases that were escalated due to complexity and how they were resolved.
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Operational Efficiency and Trend Analysis Reports
Over time, company processes require re-engineering, streamlining and automation to improve operational efficiency. This is one way of assessing whether customer service efficiency is improving, worsening or just the same.
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Customer Retention Reports
There are costs associated with customer acquisition that push businesses to pay attention to retention. Customer retention comes with numerous benefits making it key to identify reasons and rates of customer attrition.
In Conclusion
It is easy to get bogged down with lots of data when there is so much of it available but you do not understand how to get meaningful insight from it.
What is important is getting to successfully interpret the data as it will direct you to the right path enabling you to identify the issues in the customer service processes but it is key for the manager to then find out why the issues are coming up.
It is of utmost importance to match the metrics to the goals of the organization in order to get valuable information that can be used to build stronger customer relationships that result in higher customer retention and lower churn.
Customer service reports also provide insights into upcoming trends, customer satisfaction, and employee productivity.
Analyzing the data will enable the managers to enhance the customer service processes, understand how the team is performing, and subsequently help in making improved decisions.
Over the last 16 years, Jackie has built a remarkable career in Customer Service in different capacities and industries.
As a Customer Experience Trainer, her mission is focused on helping businesses make more and retain more customers through unrivalled Customer Experience.
She has an in-depth CX understanding that stems from personal experiences, learning & research all fueled by my passion and commitment to see customers happy and organizations thriving.
She is the Co-founder, CEO, and Senior Consultant at Customer Centric Kenya, the consulting and training firm of choice.
Her tailor-made training-approach has been a key strength. The companies she has worked with have appreciated some key aspects:
→ The well-researched and packaged modules.
→ The depth of training and tailoring.
→ The applicability and follow up.
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