Excellence in customer service is critical for retaining customers and maintaining a competitive advantage in the face of changing expectations. Yet APQC finds that many customer service organizations have picked key performance indicators (KPIs) that are inward-looking, lack customer focus, and fail to align with leadership priorities.
KPIs Must Align with Leadership Priorities
As part of its customer service research, APQC identified the most important goals for senior leaders when it comes to customer service support for business strategy. Improving customer satisfaction and improving customer response time topped the list, chosen by 45 and 37 percent of respondents respectively. These top two goals align well with changing customer expectations for faster service and more consistency across channels.
Unfortunately, there is a disconnect between what senior leadership is looking for and the ways in which customer service is measured in many organizations. When APQC identified the most common KPIs for the customer service function, we found that internally-focused KPIs like total process cost for customer service topped the list.
In light of these findings, it is clear that many organizations have an opportunity to re-consider their customers’ perspective more closely when selecting customer service measures. An organization that prioritizes lower customer service process costs (the most common KPI) may actually be at risk of losing customers if lower process costs mean longer wait times or less responsive customer service representatives.
One of the most effective ways to ensure that KPIs align with strategic priorities from leaders is to ask them directly. These conversations and documents like your organization’s strategic plan are helpful for getting a sense of broader organizational goals around which your customer service team can align.
Once you speak with senior leaders and review any relevant strategy documents, work to close any gaps between these broader organizational priorities and your customer service measures. When these measures are aligned, senior leaders will be able to see the value that customer service drives much more clearly. At the same time, your customer service team will develop a better understanding of how their work contributes to a broader ecosystem that collectively drives enterprise value.
Learn more about optimizing customer service by downloading APQC’s Optimizing Customer Service: White Paper.
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