How To Track Three of the Most Crucial Metrics in Telephone Customer Service

The first step towards improving your customer service is measuring it. In this article we discuss three of the most impactful measurements that you can make. Anyone can track these metrics without spending large amounts of money or time. Monmouth Telecom's Cloud-Based Hosted PBX Platform offers all of the features discussed below and more.

1. Record Every Call and Spot Check the Calls Routinely

   Have all of your customer service representatives sign a document acknowledging that calls are being recorded for quality assurance. Add a recording to your greeting that is played for incoming callers announcing that calls are being recorded for quality assurance purposes. Then record every call that occurs in any department where interaction with the customer is occurring. With Monmouth Telecom's Hosted PBX Call Recording Feature these recordings are very easy to access, via the web using a web browser. This means you can assign non-technical staff to review the recordings. Simply announcing to your staff that you will be recording the calls for quality assurance will improve the behavior of some of your staff. Next, assign someone to randomly select calls each day and grade them on a number of scales: friendliness, effectiveness, escalated when needed, etc... Compile these spot-checks into reports organized by each customer service representative. You will be surprised how quickly this will allow you to identify problematic customer service staff that need additional training.

   These recordings will act as valuable tools in the additional traning, so that you can demonstrate to your staff precisely where the problem is. Inevitably you will have a customer complaint about an interaction with one of your customer service staff members. When this scenario occurs, being in posession of the actual recording can make a huge difference in how effectively you handle the problem. A manager can perform a thorough analysis of the call recording and consider if any protocols have been violated or if any protocols need to be modified. Your customer will acknowledge that customer service is important to your organization when you reveal how closely you looked into their mistreatment and how specifically you dealt with it. Alternatively, in the event of a customer who is accusing your customer service staff of mistreatment falsely, your recordings will allow you to exonerate your staff of guilt and deal with the problem on the customer expectation side. This alternative scenario can contribute to good customer service staff morale.

2. Keep Track of your Call Queues Historically and in Real Time

   It is important to keep historical logs of customer wait times, and then mine that data for worst case and average case performance metrics. For example, you should be able to quickly answer questions like: How long are your customer's waiting before speaking with a representative on average? Last month what was the longest wait time experienced by any caller? What was the average wait time? These measurements need to be tracked before they can be optimized. Often long wait times are associated with certain times of the day, week, or month. Small changes in policy can have big effects on ensuring that calls are answered promptly and that your customers aren't tortured. Have a look at out our Call Queue Statistics package, available at no additional charge, for some real life examples of graphs and charts illustrating these concepts.

   Customer Service Reps and Management should also be keeping an eye on the number of callers waiting in real time. You should have an easy user friendly way for any staff to identify how many customers are waiting, and how long they have been waiting for. By indentifying a long wait queue in real time you can adapt and mitigate the problem before you lose any customers. Monmouth Telecom provides a Free Real Time Operator Panel that works on any modern web browser from any internet connection. The ease of use of an interface can have implications on adoption, so we make sure that this interface is as simple to use as possible, so that you can get the greatest positive impact on your customer service performance.

3. Don't let your Customers get Bounced Around

   A very common customer complaint is that they had to explain their issue to someone, only to be transferred and have to explain it again, multiple times in a row. This can infuriate a customer, to be transferred from person to person to person, with no-one taking ownership of resolving their issue. Monmouth Telecom has developed a report that addresses this issue specifically. The report reveals occurrences of someone being transferred multiple times, along with all the information you need to get to the root of the problem. Often the outcome is a combination of retraining staff and making your Automated Attendant Menus more user friendly. Can you think of a different custom report that would be useful? Leave a comment below with your report suggestions.

Are you currently tracking these measurements? Are you tracking other metrics? Leave a comment and share with our readers how you ensure that your business is providing the best customer service it can!