Questions Answered: Call Center Metrics That Matter, Social Media for Customer Service

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Below are some recent questions on social customer service, profitable customer care strategies and call center metrics that were answered by the Call Center IQ community. You can continue these discussions here.

Question: Should social media serve as a full customer service channel, or should it merely complement your existing call center/online communications?

Answer from User Phaseware: You need to offer what your customers want. And as a general rule, a single channel for customer service won't be enough. You need to offer the channels that will be used and for that you need to know your customers. One good practice to get into now, however, is to "listen" in on the social media outlets to get a feeling for whether your customers are there, if anyone is talking about your company, or if competitors are using the channel. Social Media should only be part of a mix. If that is all you offer you will lose out on many opportunities. I know it seems like everybody is on social media, but they aren't. So offer those others a way to interact with you too. On their own terms.

Question: Is it harmful to make the profit/CRM focus of your call center strategy readily apparent to agents? Or, should they believe culture is "customer satisfaction first" no matter what?

Answer from user Michael Duff: It is not harmful and it should be encouraged. Agents should have a good understanding of the company strategy and what the CRM goals are. They should really know how this cascades down to their daily targets. Agents must be working towards the same goal as collectively you are all working for teh same outcome. Customer satisfaction should be part of your strategy, perhaps the most important part. This way you can tell agents about your profit startegy and to make customers happy so they buy more/stay longer/give more/stay loyal, etc.

Answer from user Ross Hall: There's nothing wrong with sharing profitability through the business - provided it is done with a context. For example, if you've just increased profits by 10% you need to give people a bunch of reasons about why their pay isn't about to jump by the same amount. But a word to the wise ... I've oft seen this done in the belief that staff will feel more motivated and have a greater sense of ownership. True, some - a minority in most cases - will respond in this way. The majority of staff, however, may well not actually care. They may be more interested in meeting that day's performance targets or taking home a salary or meeting their mates at work or any one of the 6.5 billion reasons why people turn up for work each day. (By the way, there's nothing wrong with that - some of the hardest, most attentive workers I've been alongside and managed have simply wanted to get on with the day job and treat anything like this as a nuisance) So by all means do it, but don't expect it to vastly improve the performance of the majority and approach it with a great deal of care.

Answer from user dmclean: It's important to portary a balance. People, Customer, Profit and Quality. if you have an opportunity to celebrate one, try to tie in one 9or all three!) of the others, remind people of the investment you have in them. If you meet financial goals ensure you "re-invest" some of that profit in them; Pizza lunch, coffee and donuts, etc.

Question: In 2011, what would you identify as the most pivotal call center metric--if there is one?

Answer from user Phaseware: It isn't realistic to try to determine a single metric that says the most about a call center's performance. You need to look at a bigger picture. That being said, first call (contact) resolution (FCR) is an important metric as long as it is being measured properly. Only the customer can say if FCR occurred, it cannot be assumed just because the customer hasn't called back. Hold times/wait times are good to measure to optimize staffing. Average handle time (AHT) should be thrown out the window. While it could be used as a measure of agent knowledge or ability signaling a need for further training, all it usually does is make agents get off the phone as quickly as possible, destroying FCR and customer satisfaction.