Scaling Support Part 1- Get your metrics right

Scaling is an exciting time but it can also become a nightmare if customer operations have not been aligned. This is every founders worst nightmare, you can find a ton of blogs on scaling businesses but no one talks about how to set it up for the very first time.

In this series, we will be exploring the key components of scaling customer support starting with the most important one- Customer Support Metrics.

Most founders/CSMs find measuring and analyzing metrics really painful especially when they are part of a growing team. We are going to cover some basics on customer support metrics that can make it simple for you to get started:

• Start with essential metrics and expand as you grow
• Focus on metrics that directly impact growth
• Monitor trends over absolute numbers
• Use metrics to inform product development
• Balance quality with efficiency

There are three kinds of numbers you need to be focusing on at the early stages:

A. Operational flow

These are any metrics that can help you plan your support operations. Start with these

• Daily inbound - measure the number of daily inbound messages you receive
• Resolution time - measure time it takes on average to mark a customer issue as resolved
• Agent to inbound ratio - how many inbound conversations can one agent handle on average- this is based on average resolution time
• First response time- how many minutes does it take to send a first response- this should be measure on agent responses, not bot responses
• Resolution rate - no of customer messages that are resolved over a time period- look at it daily, weekly and monthly

B. Agent performance

• Look at resolution rate based on agent
• Number of conversations handled by an agent over a period of time
• No of escalation and SLA breaches (if applicable) by agent
• No of hour spent online - measure it against resolution rates to understand optimal performance

Based on the above, you can start monitoring performance and forecasting for any hiring needs. You can also set goals for yourself and team to improve these ratios.

C. Customer Experience metrics

The third type is learning based- these can be used to improve your customer experience

• Common issue types
• Common types
• Recurring customer complaints
• Frequency of repeat complaints
• Feedback scores - like CSAT and NPS

Since these are more qualitative, its best to use 2-3 together and come up with a weighted measure to get a holistic view on your customer experience.

Getting a tool that is able to measure live data and provide retrospective analysis is key over here, which is why we have built a comprehensive dashboard called the ‘War Room’ in KNOCCS.

To get more detail insights on Scaling Customer Support, share your email below and we will send you a free guide.

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