5 Key Customer Services Must Track During The Holiday

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Established enterprises have their own customer service teams, whereas small and medium businesses prefer outsourcing customer service to e-commerce partners.As a Shopify Partner, we help e-commerce companies run their customer service processes. One way of maintaining and tracking customer service is by continuously monitoring key customer service metrics.
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‍So, what are the key customer service metrics?

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FIRST CALL RESOLUTION (FCR) is the number of service requests resolved or closed on the first call or chat in a particular time interval. An improved FCR is indicative of the agent's preparation to handle customer queries. A well-trained staff with yield better FCR ratio; Better training, well-documented questions and answers can significantly impact the FCR rate.
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‍QUEUE LENGTH is the number of calls or chats in a queue. The ideal length of a queue is zero but it's quite tricky to regularly keep the queue length zero. To maintain a cohesive system, set up a threshold queue length based on an average call, if the queue length escalates the threshold, take a necessary action to avoid it.
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How can you improvise?

Firstly, if you have more than two agents' proper distribution of queries or tickets; it can marginally improve queue length.

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The most preferred method to control queue length is by increasing the number of agents or licenses. It is important to keep the queue length in control during peak hours as the rate of customer dissatisfaction is high.

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CHATS OR CALLS HANDLED PER HOUR : This metric is preferred to measure the efficiency of an agent.How can you improvise?Start by, optimally distributing customer service queries or tickets. An accountable service process can perk up the metrics.

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Ensure to follow these few requirements:

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• Make effective break management plans for agents. Consider busy hours while making rules for breaks.
• Track all activities done during working hours. As a general behavioural aspect, start by monitoring daily activities to boost employees' productivity.
• Effective use of team members fromtments; like the e-mail support team can monitor chat support if the chat volume is very high.

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AVERAGE RESOLUTION TIME is the total time taken to resolve a customer query during the selected time period divided by the number of tickets, resolved.
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How can you improve average resolution time?

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• Initiate by a proper process for ticket assignment. The ticket raised should be promptly assigned to the appropriate team.
• Also, automating the ticket assignment can significantly improve the customer service process as well as the resolution time.
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FIRST REPLY TIME (MEDIAN) is the time interval between a new ticket/request raised and the first response given by the customer service team. Delay in the first response is the prime reason for customer vexation.
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How can you make effective progress?

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• By means of an auto-responder Immediately send an acknowledgment mail to all the queries. Automated emails and SMS come in handy.

• Set proper expectations

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In the automated acknowledgement mail clearly mention the time required by your service team. Always use clear quantified messages like Our service team will contact you within 24 hours or 2 working days. Avoid vague messages like ASAP, at the earliest or very soon.
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‍CUSTOMER SATISFACTION INDEX: We may have many metrics but eventually, it boils down to customer satisfaction. By continuously taking customer feedback, the contact centre stays customer focused.

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‍New Voice - 50% use a company more frequently after a positive customer experience. How does one measure the customer satisfaction level?

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1. Immediate Feedback - Take immediate feedback from the customer via automated call, email or an SMS survey. Companies have seen an improvement in first-call resolution (FCR) and customer satisfaction.
2. Net Promoter Score (NPS) - It is time-tested and preferred across the industry to measure customer satisfaction level. NPS is measured on the scale of 1 -10. It uses one question which is whether the customer is ready to recommend the company or not. This helps in gauging customer satisfaction level.
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Know the ways to improve customer satisfaction:

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• Robust Knowledge base.  In this digital age, customers always try to resolve any problem by themselves. The exhaustive knowledge base and FAQs can be helpful as it can reduce the number of customer service queries.
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• Trane prompt transactional email and SMS keep customers informed about all the on-going events like order confirmation, shipping confirmation, and status of the shipment, likewise. You can also use the transactional email to cross-sell and up-sell products based on the customer's buying preference.
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• Monitor chat transcript - The chat transcript is a great source to extract customer information, their interest, frustration level, and discontentment. Regularly go through chat transcripts; preferably assign a person to do it.
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• Primary Research - Many customers do not respond to research questions, but they open up and give valuable information if you take a personal interview. It is one of the best ways to understand loopholes in customer service.
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Well-quoted by the very famous James C. Penney, founder of J.C.Penney -Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking.

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‍Get done first 20 hours task for FREE & FREE store auditOne customer, well taken care of, could be more valuable than $10,000 worth of advertising. Jim RohnThe most strenuous task for e-commerce companies today is to scale-up sales and focus on being customer-centric. 45% of US consumers will abandon an online transaction if their questions or concerns are not addressed quickly. Forrester ResearchHow companies handle customer services is an on-going cruciality during the Holiday sea E-commerce companies adopt different models for customer services.