How to Measure Your Customer Service: Practical Tips
There are many ways to measure whether the service you offer customers is great, average, or downright bad, but all of them share one common denominator.
There are many ways to measure whether the service you offer customers is great, average, or downright bad, but one of the most common methods I’ve personally been a part of is the well-known mystery calling technique.
The “Mystery Calling” strategy, used as a tool to measure quality in customer service, consists of placing “fake” calls to your service line, raising problems and questions of different kinds to assess how they get resolved. These calls put both efficiency and customer satisfaction to the test. The agents in charge of customer service will respond naturally, since they shouldn’t know they’re dealing with fake customers.
In the case of a store, “Mystery Shopper” consists of sending someone in to act as your secret evaluator, so that the people working in your business day to day won’t know you’re evaluating them—the service, the quality, whether what they were looking for was available, and the overall shopping atmosphere. That’s why it’s so important to have trained staff and employees with an excellent service attitude, to avoid surprises.
In very large companies where you can’t directly control the day-to-day behavior of a branch or location, the option mentioned above is also a viable choice.
Read: What to do with a dissatisfied customer
Once the action is complete, all the information gathered becomes the basis for building your quality report. This report lets you evaluate what the service is like, as well as the areas to improve in order to reach the established quality standard and get closer to your business goals.
Another technique—and the most widely used—is the well-known satisfaction survey. These surveys used to be done on paper, but technology has allowed us to move surveys from paper to the touchscreens of tablets; there are even companies that specialize in surveys conducted over phone calls. Actions like these are vital for measuring the quality of your service. Try to use pleasant strategies so customers don’t end up hanging up on you, because I’m telling you, it’s truly awful to receive calls all day long from an operator who has no desire to work.
Read: What continuous improvement is for
Another piece of advice: don’t dress up these satisfaction surveys, because the only judges who can clearly and objectively measure the quality of your service—and who can help you improve—are none other than your customers. So be as honest with yourself as possible; whatever the result may be, believe me, it will benefit you enormously. This is for the good of the company and/or business; it’s important to accept genuine feedback so there can be visible improvement and the customer feels valued and heard.
If you’re going to make calls to run surveys, try to give the customer personalized phone attention. Make them feel that they’re very important to your company and that they’re number one, be brief and clear, get to the point, and remember that people may be at home resting after a long day and may not want to hear about anything.
Take the opportunity to talk about pleasant things, like promotions, payment options, or to ask them directly whether there’s anything you could improve—this in case you decide to call them on behalf of your company.
Read: How to act proactively in customer service
If you already have the results, what are you waiting for? Get to work on continuous improvement. I’m sure that if you know how to do it well, it will give you great results. There are plenty of apps and websites that can guide you, especially to help you measure your results and suggest possible solutions. Good luck!