How to Measure Customer Service Effectiveness

Measuring customer service will require feedback from the customers.

Measuring customer service effectiveness can vary from business to business. There is not any particular strategy that each manager must follow. However, there are some techniques that work effectively. Measuring customer service effectiveness requires collecting information without coaching answers. You can achieve this by using surveys. Setting up an effective survey to measure a trend is not hard as long as there is a uniform template used. The entire process can take one day or more depending on the depth of information sought.

Things You'll Need

• Measurement tools (such as survey)
• Spreadsheets
• Chart (optional)

Instructions

1. Determine the form of the uniform survey template to be distributed to internal (such as employees) and external (such as buyers) customers. The amount of questions and the layout should be identical. Each person has a unique perspective to offer and should be asked the same questions when possible. For example, the survey should include a satisfaction level question about the company ranging from one to five. Give questions that have a specific response available. More details can be gathered later for each category of customers. This survey is designed to gain an overall company perspective.

2. Implement internal customer service effectiveness surveys. This should be drawn from how employees view the commitment from management to ensure they are fully trained about the product/service. A lack of knowledge could adversely affect sales and customer service efforts. Therefore, ask questions that test the employees' knowledge and ask about how they deal with difficult customers. Giving case scenarios is a great way to determine customer service effectiveness because it reveals employees' skill for the job.

3. Establish external customer service effectiveness surveys to compare the results to the internal information collected. After the sale is completed, the survey should be presented as a feedback tool. It can be done as often as the business requires (weekly, monthly, quarterly). The survey should be short and direct with multiple choice options. Paper or electronic are the two options for distributing surveys and both have benefits. For example, paper copies can be good for people that do not have Internet access, while electronic surveys save on paper costs. Deciding the best distribution method will affect response rates for all the types of buyers your business has.

4. Set up a monitoring system (such as call recording) to gain an observer perspective on measuring customer service effectiveness. Typically, call centers listen in on calls and give real-time feedback. It provides you an unfiltered experience about what each customer type has described in the surveys. For other types of businesses, it is better to randomly select people for real time (during, immediately after transaction) personal interviews consisting of employees and customers to enhance your measuring method by monitoring the consistency among prior results.

5. Seek more in-depth information when necessary for enhanced results in measuring customer service effectiveness. Allow each customer category to elaborate on the circumstances for why customers believe what they do. It does not matter whether it is positive or negative. Body language can give details during personal interviews that are not possible with a self-completed survey. A lack of eye contact may reveal the person is hiding something about the experience.

6. Review all the collected information to calculate the average responses from the multiple choice surveys consisting of both internal and external customers. Use spreadsheets to organize the data effectively and use charts to help visualize it. For instance, if the majority of customer service employees and buyers answer relatively the same, it could uncover a trend. A trend could be a tendency to handle certain situations in a particular manner that could help or hurt the company. A manager must determine this by measuring profits versus customer service satisfaction levels over time (such as months or years).

Tips & Warnings

• As an alternative for large groups that need to measure effectiveness regarding customer service, you may use focus groups to do surveys when each employee is impossible to reach. The groups should be representative of the entire department that interacts with external customers. Collecting opinions from external customers may require some form of reward incentive (such as a gift card) to gain participation.

References

• Great Brook: Measuring Service Effectiveness
• Survey Console: Customer Satisfaction

Resources

• Ash Gate: Measuring Customer Service Effectiveness