What are the best practices for setting customer support goals?

1 SMART criteria

One of the most widely used frameworks for setting goals is the SMART criteria, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. By applying these criteria to your customer support goals, you can ensure that they are clear, realistic, and trackable. For example, instead of setting a vague goal like "improve customer satisfaction", you can make it SMART by saying "increase the average customer satisfaction rating by 10% in the next quarter".

4 Customer support metrics and KPIs

Once you have set your customer support goals, you need to measure and monitor them using relevant metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs are quantitative and qualitative indicators that show how well you are achieving your goals and where you need to improve. Common customer support metrics and KPIs include Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Effort Score (CES), First Response Time (FRT), Resolution Time (RT), First Contact Resolution (FCR), Customer Retention Rate (CRR), and Customer Churn Rate (CCR). CSAT shows the degree to which customers are happy with your service, NPS measures the likelihood of customers recommending your service, CES evaluates the ease of resolving issues or queries, FRT is the average time it takes for your customer support team to respond to a customer inquiry or issue, RT is the average time it takes for your customer support team to resolve a customer inquiry or issue, FCR is the percentage of inquiries or issues resolved on the first contact, CRR is the percentage of customers who continue to use your service over a given period of time, and CCR is the percentage of customers who stop using your service over a given period of time.

5 Continuous improvement and feedback

The final best practice for setting customer support goals is to continuously review and improve them based on your performance and feedback. You should regularly track and analyze your customer support metrics and KPIs, and compare them with your goals and benchmarks. You should also solicit and act on feedback from your customers, your team, and your stakeholders, and identify the areas of improvement and innovation. By doing so, you can ensure that your customer support goals are always relevant, realistic, and aligned with your business and customer needs.

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?