True or False? Measuring Performance Leads to Better Service

If you said “Yes” – you are either amazingly astute or you had a chance to look at the recently released Q1 Zendesk Benchmark report.  In either case – Congratulations!

Zendesk, the maker of customer service software that streamlines customer support and fosters self-service and engagement, studied the use of analytics and their impact on customer satisfaction across 16,000+ companies in 125 countries. As stated in the report, “Analytics reporting is necessary for any company to not only gauge the success of its efforts, but objectively understand what areas need improvement.  For customer service these metrics typically include customer satisfaction, as well as factors that contribute to customer satisfaction, such as first reply time, full resolution time, and percentage of one-touch resolution.”

Zendesk divided a group of their software users into two groups, high usage and low usage, and compared the aforementioned metrics between the two groups.  The high analytics usage group had 1.6% higher customer satisfaction ratings, 12% lower first reply times, and 16% lower full resolution times.  In much the same way that budgeting can create financial margin, systems that measure how well a business serves its customers can highlight opportunities to do so even better.  The catch is, the systems themselves must be sound and they have to be used.  A budget tool that is implemented then ignored may indeed capture and categorize spending.  What it won’t do is reveal what the business can learn from/modify/improve.  This requires a touch point.  Someone must first access the analytics gathered within the tool, make inferences, and draw conclusions.  The strategies that result are the change agents.

On a less rosy note, Zendesk’s findings  indicate that the United States ranked 15^th in overall customer satisfaction across industry.  That dose of reality suggests ample room for improvement across business sectors.  The report’s convicting take-away?  “What is measured, truly does improve.” What systems are in place within your business to measure customer service excellence – on satisfaction and the even more challenging metrics of emotional engagement?