Support Metrics for the CEO

My CEO only understands one thing: “Green is good. Red is bad.”

I heard that from a support leader. It is only true if you are delivering obvious metrics. Clearly, slow response is bad. Customer satisfaction is good. Higher costs are bad. But none of those metrics help you run the business any better.

Here are two insights that Kevin Horman shared with the Customer Support Brain Trust:

Select metrics that show how customer support is aligning with specific business goals.

• Example: 5% of support interactions led to the customer subscribing to an additional product.
• Example: Customer churn is lower in the cohort of customers that contacted support within the last 30 days.
• Example: Usage is up by 7% among customers where the agent spent additional time working with the customer.

Every metric has more meaning when it is presented by customer segment. Suppose you have two segments: self-service and enterprise customers.

• Example: 63% of self-service customer issues are resolved with automation
• Example: Response time for enterprise customers has improved by 19 minutes.
• Example: Agent time spent with enterprise customers has increased by 15%. Time spent with self-service customers has decreased by the same amount.

With just these two insights you can deliver metrics that lead to meaningful discussions.