How do you set and review technical support targets?

1 Define your objectives

Before you set any technical support targets, you need to define your objectives. These should be clear, specific, and relevant to your support context. It is important to consider how your support goals align with your business goals and customer needs, as well as how you measure success. Some common objectives include increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty, reducing support costs and increasing revenue, improving support team productivity and performance, enhancing support quality and consistency, and resolving issues faster and more effectively.

2 Choose your metrics

Once you have defined your objectives, you need to choose your metrics as indicators of how well you are meeting those objectives. Metrics should be quantifiable, actionable, and meaningful, and you should consider the data sources, tools, and methods you will use to collect and analyze them. For instance, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score is the percentage of customers who rate their support experience positively; First Response Time (FRT) is the average time it takes for your support team to reply to a customer inquiry; First Contact Resolution (FCR) is the percentage of issues that are resolved on the first contact with the customer; Average Handle Time (AHT) is the average time it takes for your support team to resolve an issue; and Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the percentage of customers who would recommend your product or service to others.

3 Set your targets

Once you’ve chosen your metrics, you need to set your targets. Aim for realistic, achievable, and challenging values for each metric. Consider the baseline, benchmark, and timeframe for your targets. For example, you could aim to achieve a CSAT score of 90% or higher by the end of the quarter, reduce FRT by 10% in the next month, increase FCR by 15% in the next six months, maintain AHT below 15 minutes for the next year, or improve NPS by 20 points in the next quarter.

4 Monitor your progress

To ensure you’re meeting your targets, you should monitor your progress by tracking and measuring your performance against them on a regular basis. Dashboards, reports, and feedback tools are useful for visualizing and communicating your progress. Additionally, surveys and interviews with customers and support team members can provide you with valuable feedback and insights. In order to identify any gaps, issues, or opportunities that arise, it’s important to analyze trends, patterns, and outliers in the data. Further, adjusting processes, policies, or resources may help improve your performance or overcome challenges. As such, you should review dashboards and reports daily, weekly, or monthly to track your performance on each metric.

5 Evaluate your results

Finally, you need to evaluate your results. This entails comparing and assessing your performance against your targets at the end of a specific period. Utilizing data, feedback, and best practices can help with this evaluation. Celebrating your achievements, recognizing your strengths, and identifying areas for improvement are also key components of the evaluation process. To do this effectively, you should compare your actual performance with your target performance for each metric and objective. Additionally, it is important to determine the factors that contributed to either success or failure, as well as identify lessons learned and best practices to follow or avoid. Finally, share your results and feedback with your support team and stakeholders, then set new targets and objectives for the next period.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?