Cost per ticket (CPC) is an often overlooked but crucial factor when evaluating contact center performance. It measures the total cost of resolving each ticket, including labor costs and any additional costs for external services or third-party products.

If you know the cost of a movie ticket, a gallon of gas, or even a cup of coffee, why not the cost of each ticket your service desk processes? Understanding what drives costs and implementing measures to reduce them improves efficiency and service delivery.

Cost per ticket optimization requires a comprehensive review of the entire customer support process. A key question to consider is whether the cost of a ticket is within an acceptable threshold established by the organization. Once you determine the cost of a ticket, there are several ways to reduce it.

Understanding the Cost Per Ticket

Cost per ticket is calculated as a mean average, not a median average. It is considered one of the foundation metrics of customer service and comes down to cost containment and the quality of service your business provides. If your service desk is effective, you should reap a return on investment of $3 for every $1 you invest.

The ticket is the unit that your service desk uses to track customer support requests. Every ticket contains a description of the incident, data on the resolution, and a log of any changes or updates applied to the request.

Measuring how efficiently your service desk performs its tasks can be a game-changer to your business. Sometimes it may be higher than average, but this is okay if your support quality levels are also higher.

What is Cost Per Ticket?

Cost per ticket refers to the monthly operating expense of a customer service department divided by the number of tickets resolved in that period. The cost of one ticket includes labor costs and any related expenses associated with resolving it.

Using only customer satisfaction to measure success can be subjective. An accurate measure should consider customer satisfaction and cost per ticket.

A company may be comfortable with a higher cost per contact if it generates a higher customer satisfaction rating. Your business should calculate the cost per customer service contact to determine if it’s increasing or decreasing and adjust accordingly.

How to calculate your Cost Per Ticket

Calculating the cost per ticket for your service desk is simple. You must calculate your total monthly operating expense and divide it by the monthly ticket volume.

Factors that affect CPT

Including your total operating service desk cost is the best way to guarantee the accuracy of your average cost per ticket. You need to measure all your service desk running costs which may include various items such as:

Service desk and indirect personnel salaries and benefits

You should budget your service desk agents’ salaries and other benefits. Include the salaries of any direct or indirect personnel involved in the ticket resolution process.

Technology and telecommunications

The service desk area comprises various hardware to receive and resolve customer complaints. This includes desktop computers, analytics tools, servers, data centers, software licenses, and reporting tools.

The team working here also requires telecom headsets, an Automatic Call Distributor, VOIP hardware and software, and Interactive Voice Response. These are critical to any service desk operations to offer excellent customer service.

Facility and office supplies

Where is your service desk in the company located? How much is the lease payment for that specific office space? You should include the cost of getting your employees an area to work in.

This area will also require regular office utilities, daily cleaners for good hygiene, and common maintenance fees such as repainting and utility upgrades.

Other costs

The costs you incur from your service desk heavily rely on how your business operates. The expenses for Company A, a plastic manufacturing company, will differ from that of Company B, a traveling agency.

Other costs your service desk may incur include travel, legal and consulting fees, software licensing fees, meals and refreshments, property taxes, and job training. These will depend on what service you offer and how you offer it.

Average Cost Per Ticket Across Industries

The average cost per ticket is $22, but this figure differs across various industries. Some companies’ costs can go as high as several hundred dollars, while others are under $10. Let us look at multiple industries and their cost per customer service contact:

Retail

Retail industry customer service operations are less costly and range from $5 to $15. However, some big retail companies may have a higher CPT.

Technology

Technology or IT companies are among the most expensive in terms of cost per ticket. The operations require advanced technology and skilled labor, making these service desks the costliest. 

The CPT can range from $25 to $35; some companies can even pay as high as $100, depending on how they run their operations.

Telecommunications

The telecommunications industry has a range of $20 to $25 for their CPT because of their outsourcing labor costs and third-party vendor fees. They must also pay their licensing fees, making this industry highly expensive.

Healthcare

The healthcare industry has the highest cost per ticket as they must pay for their skilled labor and top-of-the-line technology. It is estimated that the cost per customer service contact is around $50 to $60, but some big hospitals and clinics have a fee as high as $100.

Financial services

Banks, credit unions, and other financial services spend less on their service desk as they only require little human resources. Their CPT can range from $10 to $25, with some larger companies spending up to $50.

Importance of Tracking Your Cost Per Ticket

If profitability is important to your business, you should track how much you spend to resolve your customer requests. They help you make better-informed business decisions and increase your business’ success.

Here are some reasons why tracking this service desk metric is beneficial to your business:

Make data-driven decisions

The best business decisions are those based on specific data such as sales, cost per ticket, departmental expenses, etc. Tracking your expenses puts the information you need to make business decisions in one place, making it easily accessible.

You can, for example, make decisions such as training employees who perform below your expectations. It also helps you identify which departments are flooded with service requests and allocate more help there.

Identify areas for improvement in customer service

There’s always room for improvement in how you do things for a better result. Even a slight change in how your service desk conducts its tasks can yield better customer satisfaction or lower operating costs while maintaining a good performance.

Collecting your cost per ticket helps you identify which sections of your customer service operations are failing. You can allocate more resources or employees to the affected areas for improvement.

Manage costs and increase revenue

The financial benefits of tracking the cost per ticket are obvious. You can see where your team spends a lot of time and business funds.

This allows you to better budget for projects and payrolls by managing your revenue appropriately. You can also maximize your income by ensuring all tickets are resolved effectively while at a minimal cost.

Strategies to Lower Your Cost Per Ticket

A high cost per ticket does not always mean your customer service is performing poorly or well. The cost should be equivalent to the level of customer satisfaction you provide. 

If your cost per contact is too high and does not equate to customer satisfaction, you can deploy some strategies to lower it. Those strategoes include:

Self-service options (FAQs, Knowledge Bases, Chatbots)

A self-service knowledge base, community forums, FAQs, and chatbots to help answer customers’ questions can significantly lower ticket volume. Customers don’t have to reach out to your agents when they can solve their problems with the available self-service options.

This is one of the most tested and true method for reducing the volume of inbound support requests. It also helps you reduce the number of agents you need to man your contact center.

Automation

Businesses can leverage automation technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) to automate most routine support tasks.

Intelligent automated ticket routing can help categorize and prioritize tickets based on urgency and impact. This reduces the need for human intervention, allowing agents to focus on other critical tasks.

Chatbots and virtual assistants can help customers with repetitive tasks such as password resetting or providing troubleshooting instructions.

Training & coaching customer service representatives

One of the most obvious ways to reduce your CPT is to empower your employees to be more effective. If you have to hire additional support, your cost will go up. Retain your customer service representatives and invest in coaching and training them to efficiently perform their tasks.

Ensure they can effectively use your setup, which includes hardware and software while providing excellent results. If you introduce an update, ensure they all get adequate guidance on how to keep operating.

Optimize agent utilization

Agent utilization refers to the percentage of an agent’s productive time out of their capacity. Agent utilization is a productivity metric which ultimately determines how long an agent works during the day and how they perform.

It gives you an insight into what you need to improve their productivity and subsequently help achieve your business objectives.

Here are some ways to optimize your agent utilization:

Deploy the right tools

You have won half the battle if you have the right tools at hand. Provide your agents with streamlined tools that provide everything they need for maximum productivity.

Your service desk software should be up-to-date and have the necessary features to assess and display tickets easily. Some must-have features for reliable software include workflow automation, task tracking, customer service analytics, and customer relationship management (CRM).

Create a conducive workspace for agents

The workspace should be comfortable enough to encourage collaboration and innovation. Ensure you have the essential tools and a positive atmosphere where employees can operate comfortably.

The office space should have good airflow and drinks and snacks for refreshment every once in a while. Consider adding height-adjustable office desks that foster an ergonomic workstation.

Monitor agent performance

Monitoring your agents’ performance helps keep track of their output and how they handle customer support requests. You can use analytics software to ensure they maximize their working hours.

If they’re set up in an area with favorable working conditions, you will unlikely have problems with dedicated employees. You can lay off or replace those who fail to perform effectively.

Monitoring and analyzing customer service interactions

How an agent interacts with customers plays a significant role in customer satisfaction. You should monitor the channels your agents use to interact with customers to gather information on improving customer satisfaction while lowering cost per customer service contact.

Here are a few tips to help you successfully monitor customer service interactions:

Track all interaction channels

Pay attention to all modes of communication despite having few contact requests. Every channel, whether email, call, chat, or SMS, has information to help you understand your customer’s concerns.

You can use text analytics to automatically monitor customer service conversations and extract valuable insights that provide you with context and allow you to extract customer sentiment. The more in-depth analysis you conduct on all channels, the better you understand which processes require improvement.

Regular channel maintenance

Every channel your customer uses to reach you should be open during working hours. Customers often get frustrated when they try out a company’s various communication channels to air their grievances without a response.

With 78% of customers backing out of a purchase due to poor customer service experience, you must find ways to streamline your operations. Hire professionals for maintenance services to ensure the technology is working and your system can keep up with the demand.

Ask for feedback from customers

Your customers are your best option for discovering the truth about how you serve them. It is imperative to ask their opinion on the level of support quality they received and whether they have any recommendations for improvements.

Reach out to those with difficult ongoing service cases and ask them questions about their problem. Make it a habit to contact them to show that you value their loyalty to your company.

Investing in technology

Customer service is a platform for businesses to respond to their customer’s concerns and a potential sales-generating method. That is why you should leverage high-quality technology to maximize its effectiveness.

Let us look at some of the effective technologies you should adopt for your IT service desk:

Ticket managing systems

A help desk ticketing system software tracks customer issues allowing your agents to solve them promptly. It makes it easier to track open cases and remain on schedule.

A reliable ticket managing system should have notification capabilities and notify users whenever a ticket is created. It can also have an automated alert notifying your agents whenever an unresolved ticket conversation goes silent.

Knowledge management systems 

Knowledge management systems allow you to collect, write, and publish information through a customer portal. You can use it to provide your customers with a self-service option for solutions about your products and services.

A knowledge management system can significantly lower your service desk phone call volumes and emails. This improves your team’s efficiency while reducing their workload.

Analytics 

You can deploy technology to generate insights by analyzing ticket processes and responses. This will help you understand what issues your agents spend most of their time on and how to improve your systems for smooth operations.

Customer servive analytics platforms enable you to optimise customer service performance by transforming your quantitative and qualitative support data into actionable insights. These insighst should be the first step towards improving the customer experience but also by help you identify the root cause of common issues facing your service desk operations. You can use this information to adjust and solve more severe problems.

Shared inbox software

A system with shared inbox streamlines operations by encouraging collaborations and workflows. It makes it easier to analyze, track, and handle customer issues.

Shared inbox software can allow you to automate handling and replying to specific customer queries and concerns. You can delegate and manage tasks in real time while giving users easy access to customer information.

Customer relationship management (CRM)

CRM software is critical for building and using a database for customer interaction. It can help you send automated emails and resolve customer complaints effectively.

Effective Customer Relationship Management makes it easy for businesses to track lead and customer interactions and optimize sales processes. Knowing your customer’s behaviors and needs helps you pivot to meet them.

Best Practices for Improving CPT 

Improving customer experience and reducing support costs should go hand in hand. When it comes to measuring CPT, businesses must be aware of how it correlates with other customer service KPIs. This includes customer satisfaction, Net Promoter® Score, average resolution time, etc.

Reducing the cost of support is important, but you should do it with care. You should not sacrifice customer service quality to reduce costs.

To ensure you get the best value for your efforts, analyze how they will impact customer experience. Look for areas to cut service desk costs that don’t result in worse customer service quality. Here are some best practices you should follow:

Reduce your wait times

Your wait time refers to the time a customer service representative takes to respond to a customer’s inquiry. Reducing your wait times can result in improved CPT, lowering your overall support costs.

You can use strategies such as employing more customer service agents and utilizing automated responses to lower your wait times. You can also invest in high-quality training for your agents to ensure they can handle customer inquiries on time.

Improve your First Contact Resolution (FCR)

Your First Contact Resolution is the percentage of customer tickets resolved on the first contact. The more customer inquiries you can resolve on the first contact, the less time and money you will spend on follow-up calls.

To improve your FCR, invest in tools to help your agents quickly identify and resolve customer issues. You can also employ strategies such as providing self-help resources to your customers or investing in quality customer service training for your agents.

Streamline the customer service process

The best way for business owners to understand how the customer service process works is to take the journey themselves. Go through a typical customer complaint keeping your eyes out for pain points such as slow-loading web pages and delayed replies.

Your pain points lead to angry calls and customer emails to your service desk. Make changes to streamline your processes based on actual research and not assumptions.

Provide proactive customer service

Only 21% of consumers trust global brands to store their information safely. The lack of trust is rising due to increased data privacy issues, breaches, and spam galore. Companies must become proactive in customer service to build customer trust.

Proactive customer service is about anticipating buyers’ problems and needs before they address you for assistance. These may include shipping delays, service interruptions, product recalls, etc.

Proactive customer service allows you to build trust by providing information before customers ask. You can also introduce customers to new products or services they may enjoy. Call or email them detailing the product and include a coupon to incentivize them.

Wrapping Up

CPT is different for every business, depending on the services you offer. It indicates how your agents respond to customer complaints reaching the service desk.

Most businesses try to lower their cost per ticket to save on revenue. However, you should be fine with your CPT generating a higher customer satisfaction rating.

Tracking your CPT provides insight into making data-driven decisions, managing costs, increasing revenue, and improving your overall business performance.

Service level agreements (SLAs) define the support standards a customer can expect from your company while helping your teams know what they need to do to reach their goals.

In this article, we look at the main types of customer service SLAs, what they typically include, and the steps you can take to ensure you never miss your SLAs.

What are Customer Service SLAs?

A customer service SLA is a written agreement that sets the stands of support that a customer can expect from a company. A customer service SLA will often include details such as the availability, quality, and timeliness of the service being provided.

Customer service SLAs are often more detailed in business-to-business relationships than in business-to-customer relationships. When you’re providing a service to a company that’s crucial to their business, they want to know precisely the level of support they’ll get from you. This is where a customer service SLA comes in.

The Four Types of SLAs

Customer-based SLAs

A customer-based SLA is specifically tailored to meet the needs of a particular customer or group of customers. It is a contractual agreement between your business and your customer that outlines the specific standards for support your company will provide. These standards can include things like response times, resolution times, and availability guarantees.

The purpose of a customer-based SLA is to establish clear expectations for both your business and your customer, ensuring that the customer receives the level of service they require and your company can meet those expectations.

Customer service SLAs

A service-based SLA establishes a specific set of standards for support promised to all customers using a particular product or service.

This type of SLA is not tailored to meet the needs of any specific customer or group of customers but rather is designed to ensure that all customers receive a consistent level of support.

Internal SLAs

An internal SLA is a service-level agreement between different departments or teams within your organization. It outlines the specific standards and expectations for support and cooperation between these teams to improve efficiency and accountability within your organization.

Internal SLAs can cover various topics, including marketing, sales, customer service, and IT support. For example, an internal SLA might define how the marketing team will provide a certain number of qualified leads to the sales team each quarter or how the IT department will respond to and resolve help desk tickets within a specific timeframe.

The purpose of an internal SLA is to establish clear communication and expectations between teams, helping to ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals and is aware of their responsibilities.

You can use internal SLAs to reduce conflicts and misunderstandings, leading to better customer service and improved business outcomes.

Multilevel SLAs

A multilevel SLA is a type of service level agreement divided into different levels, each addressing different sets of customers with varying needs and expectations. This type of SLA allows for more flexibility in providing services to different customer groups while maintaining overall consistency and quality of service.

A typical multilevel SLA may have a corporate-level component that applies to all users, outlining the essential services and support that all customers will receive. In addition, separate agreements may cover specific customer groups or service tiers with more detailed terms and conditions.

The purpose of a multilevel SLA is to ensure that all customers receive the level of service they require while also allowing for more tailored services and support for different customer groups.

You can use a multilevel SLA to improve customer satisfaction and retention while maximizing revenue and profitability for your business.

What Does a Customer Service SLA Include?

Every customer service SLA should clearly outline the roles and functions of each party while setting specific, measurable expectations for the level of service offered.

1. Overview

Your agreement summary should outline the parties involved and give a broad overview of the business relationship and services provided. It will specify the effective dates of the contract.

2. Description of services

Clearly describe the scope of the services offered to customers. For customer service SLAs, you want to include the type of support agents will provide and its limitations.

It’s essential to define details such as what it means to get a response to a support request and to have a request resolved, as these building blocks will be used as the basis of more specific key performance indicators (KPIs).

3. Service availability

Define when and where customers will be able to get support. Even if you state 24/7 support is available, this doesn’t necessarily mean customers will be able to speak to an agent on the phone at all times. Self-service support options and AI-powered chatbots offer alternative options for out-of-hours support.

4. Service performance

The heart of your SLA agreement, the service performance section outlines specific metrics you will offer to your customer.

Common service performance metrics in SLAs include:

• Response time—How long it takes to provide a first response to a customer when they request assistance.
• Resolution time—How long it takes for an agent to resolve a customer’s query after a ticker has been opened.
• First Contact Resolution—How often a customer service issue is resolved on the first interaction.
• Hold time—How long a customer has to wait on hold before speaking to an agent.
• Customer Satisfaction Score—A measurement of how satisfied a customer is with a support interaction.

Typically, you’ll measure all customer service interactions over each month and take an average for the relevant KPIs. The SLA will specify the averages considered satisfactory or unsatisfactory, typically in line with industry standards.

5. Exclusions

To avoid attempting to offer a customer service SLA that agrees to deliver too much, certain limitations must be set on the agreement. Exclusions in an SLA set out some specific situations where the SLA won’t apply. Some examples of standard SLA exclusions include:

• Scheduled maintenance—­Service disruptions caused by planned, required maintenance.
• Force Majeure events—Events beyond the control of your company, such as natural disasters or acts of terrorism.
• Issues caused by the customer—In the event the customer has improperly used your products or services outside of their intended use.
• Third-party service providers—Situations caused by third parties, such as issues with telecommunications or internet service providers.
• Out-of-scope activities—Anything not explicitly defined in the SLA as a service you will provide.

6. Penalties

Penalties set out the actual consequences of parties not meeting the SLA as stated. Penalties can include financial remuneration, service credits to offset the cost of future services, or contract termination. In many cases, an SLA will offer you some chance to improve your service before immediately severing the business relationship.

Penalties can also be specified for the customer. For example, an SLA could specify that if they use your services for illegal activities, you can immediately void any contract.

What Happens if You don’t Meet Your SLAs?

Failing to meet your SLAs can lead to declining customer satisfaction and loyalty. If a customer has an expectation of a certain level of service and that expectation isn’t met, they may become frustrated or dissatisfied with the business. This leads to negative word-of-mouth recommendations and even loss of customers.

If a business consistently fails to meet its service level agreements, it can harm its brand and reputation in the eyes of customers and potential customers.

Consistently failing to meet SLAs also lead to decreased employee morale and productivity. If employees cannot meet the standards outlined in SLAs, they may become demotivated or disengaged, leading to lower productivity and performance.

Not meeting SLAs can result in financial penalties or legal action. Many SLAs include penalties or compensation clauses if the business fails to meet its obligations.

Ensuring Customer Service SLAs Do Not Hurt Your Business

Deflect customer service requests

You can take some strain off your customer service SLAs by reducing the number of customer service requests you receive in the first place. Several methods are highly effective:

• Include an easy-to-browse knowledge base on your website so customers can find answers to their issues independently. Consider the use of video tutorials.
• Anticipate potential customer service requests by analyzing customer data. Provide guidance on potential issues before the customer calls you through tutorials, user guides, regular product updates, and other proactive support.
• Consider using chatbots that simulate a conversation with a customer on your website, messaging platform, or social media. Chatbots are a self-service option that can automate simple tasks and direct customers to online manuals and user guides.
• Interactive voice response (IVR) systems can automatically direct customers to the correct department or offer them the information they require based on the responses they provide.

Focus on the right SLA metrics

• Meet customer expectations: SLAs not aligned with customer needs and expectations can lead to dissatisfied customers. Focus on the right SLAs that prioritize the most critical aspects of your service and align with your customers’ needs and expectations.
• Improve efficiency: The right SLAs can help improve operational efficiency by setting clear goals and targets for your team. By focusing on the correct SLAs, you can streamline your processes, reduce waste and improve productivity, which can ultimately help reduce costs and increase profitability.
• Measure progress: SLAs are a way to measure and analyze the success of your service and track progress over time. By focusing on the right SLAs, you can better understand how well you meet customer needs and identify areas for improvement.

Clearly define all roles and responsibilities

A robust SLA lays out clear rules. Everyone involved, from the customer to support agents, should know what is expected from the business relationship, what is considered a breach of SLA, and the compensation or remedy the business will offer if the SLA isn’t met.

It is just as important to outline situations where the customer has breached an SLA. If a customer uses your services for illegal practices, for example, it would be grounds for canceling the contract immediately.

Get input from your agents

• Set realistic SLAs: Customer service agents are the ones who interact with customers daily and are the first point of contact for most customer issues. They’re familiar with the types of problems that customers face and how long it typically takes to resolve them. By getting their input, you can set realistic SLAs that reflect the time it takes to address customer issues.
• Better agent buy-in: When agents have input into the SLAs, they are more likely to take ownership of meeting those goals and work together to improve the customer experience.
• Identify areas for improvement: Customer service agents can help you identify areas where your service is falling short. For example, if agents report spending a lot of time on the phone with customers because of issues in payment processing, you will know to invest more effort improving that step of the customer journey.

Regularly review your SLAs and make adjustments

Reviewing SLAs can help ensure they remain relevant and aligned with current business goals and customer needs.

Perhaps you have more resources now so you can set a higher standard for SLAs. Maybe the marketplace has changed, with competitors offering more enticing SLAs, and you’re losing customers to them. Or, the products and services you supply have changed, so your SLAs need to be adjusted.

SLAs are a critical component of customer satisfaction. Regular review and adjustment can help ensure that customers continue receiving service levels that matter to them.

The Final Word

SLAs for customer support outline the service a client should expect from your company. It includes things like a description of services, expectations on service availability and performance, and penalties for not meeting those expectations.

SLAs are crucial for defining what your business is expected to do, and they help focus your customer service to deliver the service customers want. By ensuring your customer SLAs are relevant, achievable, and competitive, you can offer the highest level of service in your industry.

While customer service is a competitive advantage, unsatisfactory support is one of the main reasons why customers abandon companies. As consumer expectations, propelled by the latest technological advancements, continuously evolve, customer service leadership has emerged as the main factor impacting the quality and efficiency of customer service.

Customer service leadership has emerged as the main factor impacting the quality and efficiency of customer service

As a support manager you should balance budgets, enhance team performance, and deliver an elevated customer experience. Daunting as the task might sound, you can inspire loyalty, increase employee satisfaction and keep costs down by utilising feedback insights.

In the following paragraphs, we will discuss how to use feedback as a tool to

• Enable personalized customer support
• Empower customer service agents
• Improve the customer service process

Deliver personalized support

According to Gladly, over 90% of customers would stop buying after a few bad experiences with support, and 25% of them would jump ship just after one lousy experience.

To keep up with and exceed rapidly evolving expectations, build your contact center to match customer wants and needs at a personal level.  When it comes to personalised support, feedback insights are vital as they enables you to understand your customers better and react to their issues accordingly. This is how:

Know your customer

Feedback data is mainly used to gauge customer sentiment after an interaction with support. This data, however, can become extremely powerful when linked with customer information already in your Customer Relationship Management platform. Connecting feedback with your CRM platform will allow you to tap into information about previous interactions the customer has had with your brand across multiple points in their customer journey and deliver a personalized and memorable support experience informed by data relevant to that particular customer.

Act on customer feedback

Acting and reacting either to negative or positive feedback will boost your customer service efficiency and help your company grow. Immediately reacting to negative feedback means that you can turn a negative experience into a positive one, therefore, increasing customer satisfaction. Positive feedback will help you identify happy customers and provide you with up-selling or cross-selling opportunities. All it takes for both scenarios to yield positive results is to automatically route feedback insights to the hands of the right people or departments in the company.

Empower your customer service agents

Happy employees make for happy customers. Recent research shows that, on average, in customer care organisations, agent turnover is between 30% – 45%, and agent turnover cost can reach up to 20.000$ per agent, not accounting for costs involved with training new agents and the blow on team morale. Use feedback management insights to steer higher-level leadership decisions in the right direction to avoid turnover and increase employee satisfaction. To do this, identifying coaching needs at an individual level and automate positive feedback to the right people.

Identify individual coaching needs

By tracking feedback, you can find out when new employees become profitable and how newly acquired skills are making their way into customer interactions. Furthermore, feedback can show you whether your training programs are informed by agent behaviour and address real needs at an agent and not just team level.

According to Harvard Business Review, customer service agent personality types can differ. Feedback can help you better understand these personality types and tailor coaching at an individual level. As a result, your agents will be more successful in performing their tasks and more satisfied with their role in your organisation. 

Redirect positive feedback back to your agents

Positive feedback on agent performance gives customer service managers an excellent opportunity to motivate employees or reinforce wanted behaviour. Acknowledging and celebrating positive feedback aimed at the agent helps create a positive, empowering environment that facilitates learning and boosts performance.  

Positive feedback can also foster a culture of shared leadership. When that is the case, employees take more responsibility for internal process development and pro-customer decisions. As a result, your support team will increase productivity, deliver a better customer experience, and report higher employee satisfaction rates.

Improve the customer service process

Focusing on your customer service process can make a significant impact on customer experience, employee performance, and the way you develop and improve operations. A good service process consists of a defined way of addressing common customer care scenarios and links all relevant internal structures, templates, policies, and system protocols.  

Capturing feedback is the fastest and easiest way to monitor and measure the success of your customer service strategy

Capturing customer feedback can help you monitor and measure how well-implemented your service process and whether your strategy needs rethinking or improving. This is how to use feedback to achieve that:

Pinpoint the root cause of repeat issues

Identify repeat issues effectively and systematically utilising customer feedback. Analyse this feedback to understand the root causes behind those issues, address them in a timely manner and/or adjust your service process to deal with them faster and more efficiently. You can, also, reroute feedback insights pertaining to repeat issues to different organisational departments and inform decision-making in terms of future product or service development.

Prioritize First Contact Resolution (FCR)

Fist Contact Resolution or FCR is one of the most critical metrics for measuring service process efficiency and can give you a whole new perspective on what your customers think of the quality of the service received. Low FCR rates can lead to a spillover effect which might result in reducing loyalty by 10-30% and increasing service costs by 50%. So, tracking FCR is vital if you want to ensure that your customer service process is actually delivering the desired results – meaning really solving customer issues and not just patching them up.

Wrapping Up

To conclude, customer service leadership can highly benefit from a well-integrated feedback management solution that provides actionable feedback data that can be used to reduce employee turnover, customer churn, and a costly customer service process.