It is no secret that the success of a company depends largely on the quality of the support team.  After all, they are the ones who interact with customers and help resolve any issues or complaints they may have.   So, as an IT leader, you should be able to easily measure the performance of your support team. This way you can identify areas for improvement.   Fortunately, there are several methods you can use. In this blog post, we'll discuss 4 ways to measure your support team's performance more easily.  Also, we'll provide some tips on how to improve your support team performance if needed - read on!  

Use metrics to understand your support team's performance  

Currently, a challenge faced by many companies is to find an effective way to measure the performance of their work teams, specially the support team.This particular team is the cornerstone in reaching out to potential and current customers. In this regard, we recommend that you start using and learning how to interpret metrics!They will guide you in the proper follow-up of your agents' tasks.  Basing your follow-up on specialized metrics guarantees you:  

• Improve customer service quality.  
• Determine customer satisfaction.  
• Identify weaknesses in service delivery.  

Now, which metrics can help you optimize your support team? Let’s see!

Metrics to optimize your company’s costumer support

• Volume of requests

Carefully tracking the number of requests you receive at any given time (day, week or month), gives you an overall context of how your customer service is performing.  As a result, this metric will help you establish which are the hours with the highest traffic of requests and the waiting times for solutions.  Also, you will also be able to visualize which are the most recurrent queries, and thus develop effective strategies to address these types of queries.    

• Average number of responses per request

If a customer waits a long time for a response to a query, it is a problem that says a lot about how the company is managing the customer service area.  Studying the number of responses a ticket receives will help determine problems in the support team.  This data collection and analysis will allow us to:    

• Track the problems (requests) that take the longest to resolve.  
• Establish an acceptable limit of responses for each request (depending on the nature of the request).    

In conclusion, keeping track of the number of responses derived from the same request or ticket is essential to detect failures in the support team.Surely, it will also allow you to evaluate possible solutions and, consequently, speed up the customer service process.

• Resolution rate  

The ideal for any company is that customers can solve their problems at the first contact.That is, with just one call, message or email they can solve their contingency.However, we must distinguish between "Resolution rate" and "First contact resolution rate". What is the difference? Basically, when measuring the "First Contact Resolution Rate" you have to take into account the support channel that the customer has chosen.   For example, a customer who contacts via live chat is likely to get a faster response than those who choose to contact by mail.   Nevertheless, no company should allow its customers to have to contact technical support 6 or 7 times to get a solution. If that's happening then you need to turn to this metric.  

Obtaining the average problem resolution rate will allow you to:  

• Identify the areas where your product or service has the most problems.  
• Measure the efficiency of your support team and determine who in the team solves the problems on the first contact.  
• Take measures to improve the areas of customer service that present low efficiency.

• Customer Satisfaction

You have probably lived the experience of answering a survey about some service or product you have consumed, haven't you?   Well, these actions on the part of a company have the objective of measuring customer satisfaction. They want to know if your experience as a consumer has been good or not. Knowing customer satisfaction is important to determine how your support team can improve. There are different ways to get customer feedback:    

• Surveys with key questions  
• Traditional numerical scale  
• Using a scale of emojis or stars.  

Particularly, our recommendation is that you do these surveys by setting them up as a widget right after the customer finishes the live chat.

• Customer retention

Did you know that it is much easier to retain customers than to acquire new ones?However, many companies put all their efforts into finding new customers. And neglect those who are already loyal to the brand. Big mistake!For this reason, it is important to know your company's customer retention rate. So, with these metrics you can determine:    

• Number of customers who tend to leave  
• Time period in which they tend to leave  

To calculate your customer retention rate, you should follow this formula:  Number of customers at the beginning of the time period / Number of customers at the end of the time period.   From there you can study the likely causes why customers left and what strategies can be applied to prevent this from happening.    

Tips to improve the performance of your team

• If you have a remote technical costumer support, allow them to be connected. It is important that they share information and collaborate with each other. Indeed, a team with greater integration has better levels of communication. Therefore, greater effectiveness in their tasks.    

• Software such as Freshdesk Messaging allows the implementation of chatbots with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in which automated responses and suggestions can be configured.  

• Offer regular training to your team to keep them up to date in the use of the tools. This way, they will be able to manage knowledge in different areas. This will allow them to provide a better service to customers!

• It is important that your company has a knowledge base that customers can access. This knowledge base can be offered in different ways: through a blog, user manuals for FAQs, tutorials, eBooks, among others.  

In conclusion, efficient customer support is necessary for the success of an organization. But overall it is certainly an area that depends on many variables.So, to achieve the most effective and efficient integration and service, we recommend Freshdesk Support Desk. With GB Advisors you will receive the necessary support to take advantage of all the functionalities of this incredible tool.  Do you want more information? Contact us now.