When you outsource customer support service, you will have a challenge in measuring and knowing whether it is offering consistent ongoing performance. The support team serves as the face of your brand, so if it doesn't reflect your brand’s image, then you will fail. The agents need to have proper training, good management of the team, and an understanding of your brand's needs. You also need to know the calibrations that allow the team to drive high-level performance.
There are many key performance indicators you need to agree on with the support team to ensure that you get better results in their service delivery. Here are the best KPIs that you can use when you outsource customer service to gauge if the team is performing:
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Your customers need to be happy and satisfied, to know if the customers are content, you need to ask questions on the kind of experience they are having with your company. Ask them how they rate their experience when engaging with your company including the support team. It could be a questionnaire or survey that you throw them or one question. A survey will provide you with results that you can use to create a rating scale to help you determine how the support team is performing.
Having said that, how can you ensure the customer service team you outsource is yielding great reviews from customers or clients? You need to confirm whether the team is receiving proper training to ensure they confidently and knowledgeably deliver their services. The agents also need to have the right resources and support. They need the tools to perform their duty. You may also want to ensure that issues affecting the agents are resolved without having to change multiple agents. The secret here is to avoid complaints from the customers, which you can ensure by making sure the team is well trained, equipped, and knowledgeable about your brand and the expectations of the customers.
Service Levels
If it's a call center you have outsourced, you know the industry standards dictate that 80 percent of customer calls should be answered within 20 seconds. This means that 20 percent of those calls are likely to be put on hold, which may be a realistic goal. However, depending on your goals, you may want to increase that percentage. Every company has it's protocols and goals, so you need to customize the service level of your company. You need to work with the support team so that you determine their capacity in offering good support to your customers. Depending on the budget and call volume, the agents need to answer lower or higher percentages of calls in the first 20 seconds. Always strive to have a higher volume of calls answered. A 24*7 outsourced customer service ensures that your customers are attended to whenever they call.
First Call Resolution Rate (FCR)
One of the main reasons why you outsource customer support services to cut back on cost. If a customer has to call several times before a problem is solved, it means that you are spending more on that service. You need to ensure that the support team can resolve customer issues on the first call, if possible. The more repeat calls are made, the more you pay for the service. To ensure that customer issues are solved on first calls, you should hire the right people. The agents should be great problem-solvers and ready to help your customers. The agents should have a huge CRM that can provide all the information needed to solve customer problems easily. The questions customers ask should be deal with as quickly as possible.
Conversion Rates
A support team shouldn't just deal with customer problems, it should also help convert leads. The customer support company you outsource should be able to train its agents to deliver more for your business and not just solving problems. The team needs to lure the callers to purchase products and services. The calls the agents receive should be converted to sales. This way, you get more ROI. You need to have a metric that shows whether the support agent is converting the leads to customers or not.
Average Handling Time
The ultimate goal of customers calling your support team is to get help. The agents should not only be friendly and warm-hearted but also able to resolve an issue within the shortest time possible. The agents should be concise on answering calls or emails while ensuring that the customers are happy. The cost of outsourcing the customer care team goes up if an agent has to spend too much time solving an issue with a customer or call. The aim is to offer quality service while managing the time spent on handling customer problems. The agents should have proper training on how they can quickly address issues with customers without taking a lot of time. The managers of the support team should train their workers to be efficient and avoid having prolonged conversations with customers. The agents should be able to understand why a customer calls, and directly commit to resolving the issue.
Complaint Escalation Rate
Although it’s difficult to prevent having zero complaints, you must keep them at minimal. If the number of complaints is increasing about the service of the support team, you need to look at the problem. Probably the agents are not doing their work or they are not happy with their job. If the issues resolved are few and the callers are escalating their complaints, you need to realize that the team isn't delivering as required.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, having a productive outsourced customer support team helps you make customers happy, increase sales, and reduce the cost of outsourcing the customer care team. It also helps build your brand and promote customer loyalty. Using these KPIs to measure the performance of the customer agents ensures that you know their weaknesses and strengths. It helps understand whether customers are getting the help they need and if their problems are being solved the right way. A professional customer support team knows that it has to deliver and needs to meet the target.
