How does your call center measure up?

Setting goals for customer satisfaction success

The best contact centers have established goals based on business needs that everyone works towards.  Goals help you determine what success means to your organization - otherwise you won't know it when you get there.  Establishing goals and assessing performance is an ongoing process that defines how well the center is doing over time in the important area of customer satisfaction.

Base your customer satisfaction goals on the following areas:

1. Business goals
   The call center goals must be aligned with the the overall business goals of your organization.  This will ensure that the organization as a whole will see how the call center contributes to achieving the big picture goals set by the company.
    
2. Competitive position and overall market performance in your industry area
   A good working knowledge of how your competition treats their customers will give some insight into what your customers expect of you.  Set your goals to be at the same level or a higher level of customer satisfaction than your main competitors.  Benchmarking is the first step to staying competitive!

For the top KPIs by industry check out Benchmarks in Call Center Operations.

3. What customers indicate they value on the customer survey, such as:

• short queue time or Web response time
   
• courtesy
   
• few or no transfers
   
• knowledgeable, accurate transaction handling
   
• quick delivery of products or service
   
• first contact resolution

Additional guidelines for setting customer satisfaction goals include:

1. Be clear about what you are measuring and why.
    
2. Set your goals and standards so they are ambitious but attainable.
    
3. Performance objectives should be expressed as a range, such as 90% or greater satisfied or very satisfied.

Impact of technology on customer performance objectives

Technology is impacting customer satisfaction data collection in two ways:

1. Technology enables different methods of customer service, including email and Web service, and with these channels the task of collecting and evaluating customer service changes.  Measuring customer satisfaction for email is different than with online Web services.  Moreover, both measurement processes for these contact channels are different than those used for voice transactions.
    
2. Technology also enables different tools for measuring customer satisfaction.  These tools include such features as:

• Automated VRU surveys after a caller speaks to an agent
   
• Automatic call back of selected customers for a customer interview with an agent
   
• Web surveys
   
• Auto-reply email

Just remember - measuring customer satisfaction is critical for business success regardless of the media used for the contact.  Be sure to consider your method of customer contact when setting customer satisfaction goals and formulating your measurement process.  You may find it necessary to develop a separate set of goals for each type of customer contact.  Also, take advantage of the technology-enabled tools for collecting customer data.  Determine which collection method will be most cost-effective for your organization and also the most convenient and non-imposing for your customers.

Revisiting customer satisfaction goals

Customer satisfaction performance objectives will again be important when you are reporting the results of your measurements.  (Module 3 in this tutorial series covered the reporting component of this process.)  You will need to compare your current performance with your performance objectives.  Routinely missing the target or goal is not acceptable and a new improvement plan would need to be enforced.