The illusion of satisfaction in customer service

Happy customers are essential to the growth of any business. However, a high customer satisfaction rating doesn't always equate to customer loyalty or advocacy. While evaluating customer satisfaction is valuable, relying solely on this metric to guide long-term business decisions can be misleading.

This is why business with a loyal customer base track a range of post-purchase metrics—Interaction, perception, and outcome metrics—each helping them evaluate the effort needed to ensure customer satisfaction and build long-term loyalty. 

Customer satisfaction vs customer loyalty

Customer satisfaction is more immediate and typically measures customers' immediate thoughts and feelings after an interaction with a business. While customer loyalty can be attributed to high levels of customer satisfaction sustained over time. It is a distinct metric that describes customers' actual behavior and commitment to your business over a longer period of time.

While outcome metrics — customer retention rate, churn rate, customer lifetime value, net promoter score, and customer satisfaction rating — help you evaluate customers' long-term relationships with your business, the first step toward building loyalty is to ensure customer satisfaction, which can be evaluated using interaction and perception metrics. 

Interaction metrics

These metrics are usually measured during your customer's interaction with your business.

First response time (FRT)

First response time is a metric used to evaluate the time between the initiation of a customer's support request and the agent's first response to the ticket. This includes only the responses provided by an agent and not automated responses. It is usually measured for all new tickets raised by the customer.

Why measure this?

Customers want immediate responses, and this metric helps you evaluate your team's effectiveness in being able to deliver them.

Best practices to measure FRT accurately

→ Define the business hours to measure FRT to ensure you get a clear picture of your team's performance.

→ Set service level agreements that outline your business's commitment to resolving a customer's query within a set period of time.

→ Measure median instead of average to avoid miscalculations. For instance, if three tickets took one hour each to respond, while one received a response within three hours, the ART is going to be higher compared to the actual experience for most customers.

First contact resolution (FCR)

First contact resolution measures the number of tickets that were resolved in the first interaction without any follow-ups on all channels for a certain period of time.

Why measure this?

Customers expect their tickets to be resolved quickly without having to follow up continuously or repeat themselves. Tracking this metric helps you evaluate if your business is able to provide this experience. It also helps you address the bottlenecks in case of longer resolution times.

Best practices

→ Before considering a resolution as FCR, it's essential to evaluate if a customer reached out on multiple channels or just one to ensure there are no follow-ups not just in the same ticket but even across channels.

→ Consider this metric for questions that can be solved in first contact and not for complex tickets that might need more time to resolve.

→ Ensure your set appropriate standards internally for when to consider a ticket as resolved. For instance, a query about a product return could be considered resolved if the customer gets a return confirmation and clicks the end chat button from their end.

Reopen rate and FCR

Calculating first contact resolution along with the reopen rate can help you understand if your agents are able to resolve issues completely. Reopen rate helps you understand the number of tickets that were reopened after the ticket was marked as closed or resolved.

A high FCR with a high reopen rate can be a point of concern and should be addressed quickly. Whereas a high FCR with a low open rate is an indicator of quality support.

What is a good FCR?

A good FCR target is 70–79%. 

FCR, customer effort score and customer satisfaction score.

According to Gartner, customers who get their queries resolved in first interaction tend to have a high satisfaction score and low customer effort score. 

How to improve FRT and FCR

Your FRT and FCR metrics to an extent rely on how well you've streamlined your customer support operations and how well-equipped your agents are to deliver high levels of customer support. Here are some ways you can improve your FRT and FCR.

→ AI assistance for agents and customers

Deploy an AI assistant on your website that can chat with your customers so that when they browse through your website, they'll often be able to leave with a solution.

Help your agents deliver quick and accurate responses by equipping them with AI assistance that provides ticket summaries and response suggestions by analyzing the customer's question.

→ Self-service that actually helps

Keep your help center updated by monitoring and updating it regularly so your customers always find the right information instantly 24/7.

→ Route tickets in the right direction

When a ticket reaches the right subject matter expert, the chances of it getting resolved in first contact are bound to increase. Through automation, set ticket assignment rules that assign tickets to the right agents, avoiding constant ticket transfers and putting customers through the painful task of repeating themselves multiple times.

→ Escalate issues on time

Living up to your service commitment is a crucial step towards building stronger relationships with customers. You can set up rules that trigger an escalation if a customer ticket is not attended to within a specific period of time. This helps make sure your customers always receive a timely response and get the right people to take care of the situation. 

Perception metrics

Perception metrics help you understand how the customer views their experience with your business after an interaction. 

Customer effort score (CES)

CES measures how easily a customer was able to interact with your business to make a purchase or get support.

A customer effort survey is usually sent to a customer at the end of an interaction with a business. It contains questions like "How easy was it for you to find a solution to your query?" along with options in the form of emoticons, or options ranging from very difficult to very easy. You can also include an open-ended question to receive additional feedback from your customers.

Why measure this?

Around 96% customers that had to put in a lot of effort to interact with a business become disloyal to that brand, according to Gartner. Providing a great experience without requiring effort from customers brings multiple benefits, such as:

→ Positive word of mouth

→ Increased repeat purchases

→ Lower costs to acquire and keep customers

→ Fewer repeat support requests.

→ Less frequent escalations

→ Decrease in channel switching

Measuring this metric helps you identify the bottlenecks faced by customers in their interaction with your business and understand their needs better so you can provide them with an experience that meets their needs.

Best practices to measure CES

Measuring this metric depends on the customer response. Here are a few tips to get increased engagement on your CES form.

→ Sending a short question with easy-to-understand language makes it easy for your customers to understand the question and respond accurately.

→ Adding an open-ended question without making it mandatory gives your customer the flexibility to provide feedback, giving you additional customer insights.

→ Sending a question right after an interaction, for instance, resolving a ticket, is likely to increase the chances of customers interacting with your survey. 

Customer satisfaction (CSAT)

As the name suggests, it helps you understand the level of customer satisfaction attained after a specific interaction.

CSAT surveys are sent to customers after they've interacted or made a purchase with your business. This usually includes a question such as "How satisfied are you with the customer service you received?" with options ranging from very satisfied to very dissatisfied.

How to calculate CSAT

The formulas are based on a 5- or 10-point Likert scale, meaning 5 is the highest score on a 5 point scale and 10 on a 10 point scale. To calculate CSAT, only the satisfied ratings, i.e, satisfied and very satisfied options are taken into consideration.

Why measure this?

This metric helps you understand your customer's experience with your business during a specific interaction. Through this data, you can understand specific areas that require improvement and take steps towards building customer loyalty. After all, every interaction counts in building a loyal customer base. 

How to improve CSAT and CES

Customer satisfaction and customer effort scores rely on not just the first interaction but the overall experience your customers had before getting their issue resolved. Here's how you can ensure your relationship with your customers remains healthy over time.

→ Be accessible across channels

Your customers are likely to raise their issues and reach out for help on the channels they regularly use. Building your presence and monitoring these channels regularly allows your customers to access support easily and reduce the effort that goes into searching for and contacting support.

→ Provide contextual support

Your customers appreciate it when you understand what they are looking for without having to repeat themselves. Build a personalized customer experience by putting all your customer's previous interactions and their journey with your business in one place with the help of customer service software.

→ Collaborate with the right teams

No customer likes to be constantly transferred from one customer support rep to the other. Avoid this by providing your support teams with a platform that allows them to collaborate with other teams and get the insights needed to resolve an issue without making your customers go through the tiring process. Instead, your teams will collaborate behind the scenes and present each customer with a helpful solution.

→ Proactively support your customers

To avoid unpleasant surprises, reach out to your customers proactively with the help of automation. You can set up reminders and triggers that either update your customer support teams to check with your customers regularly or send direct updates or reminders to your customers to update them regarding an ongoing issue. 

Translate metrics into customer loyalty

When your teams put in all their efforts to ensure your customers have a smooth customer experience, it's essential to evaluate this journey and take actions with the right insights and lead your teams in the right direction. Once you've ensured your customers are satisfied with your service, it's essential to also focus on customer retention metrics like customer retention rate, net promoter score, and more to ensure you continue to have strong relationships with your customers.

The best way to remain updated on all customer service metrics is to choose customer service software that creates reports and dashboards containing key metrics automatically, while giving you the flexibility to customize them as needed.