This is a guest post contributed by Klaus.
Nine out of ten customer support leaders believe that customer expectations are higher than ever.
Do you agree?
If you’re nodding your head, you’re on the right track. But chances are your competitors are too. Bringing your support team to a high standard takes dedication, and maintaining first-rate quality takes commitment.
If you don’t put in the effort, disloyal customers will soon find a better alternative.
Your guide to improving the quality of your customer support:
1. Set support goals
Every business’ definition of excellent quality service differs. When setting out your vision for support, think first of the nature of your product or service, what your customers expect from you, and how you serve them (i.e. which channels, whether you have a knowledge base, etc.).
You also need to bear in mind company-wide goals. Your support team is valuable and should feel part of these wider efforts.
Are your goals SMART?
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-dependent
2. Build a robust quality assurance program
Support quality assurance is the practice of reviewing support conversations to rate performance.
Conversation reviews are the only way to measure the quality of your support against internal quality standards. It pinpoints weaknesses in your process and highlights areas where agents need further coaching. You can then give meaningful feedback to your team.
Although it’s possible to do this manually, using a quality assurance tool is far more efficient and scalable.
With Klaus, companies can choose how they want to rate, who they want to conduct reviews (QA specialists, managers, or peer-to-peer), and use the platform for tracking metrics and coaching purposes. Automation and AI tools elevate your efforts.
Tip:
Foolproof guide for building a robust customer service quality assurance program.
3. Track the right metrics
Keeping track of the relevant KPIs for quality peels off the guesswork. Review where you are and what you need to do to improve – after all, what gets measured, gets managed!
4 essential customer support metrics
- CSAT (or Customer Satisfaction Score) – Survey your customers to ask how happy they are with your service.
- IQS (Internal Quality Score) – Use conversation reviews to rate your customer service conversations against your internal standards.
- CES (Customer Effort Score) – Survey your customers to ask how easy it was to find a solution to their problem.
- NPS (Net Promoter Score) – Survey your customers to ask whether or not they would recommend you to others.
Your metrics should link up with corresponding support goals. For example, if you aim to make the support process easier for customers, tie this with your CES; if you want all agents to follow set protocol, tie this with your IQS.
These four metrics combined give you an all-encompassing command on your customer service quality.
Beware: a common pitfall is to focus exclusively on CSAT. But customers can only judge how well an agent responded to their demands, not on how well company processes and standards were upheld.
4. Coach your support team
It’s no secret that the customer service industry experiences high staff turnover. A thorough onboarding process and consistent coaching are prerequisites for maintaining a high standard of customer care.
To make your feedback and training sessions count, you want specific examples and data to measure progress. Using conversation reviews gives managers the perfect insight into each individual agents’ performance and how teams improve on the whole.
On Klaus’ platform, you can pin specific conversations to use for feedback, create custom quizzes to test agent knowledge, track sessions to follow up on action points and view coaching history, and track all improvements using team metrics on the dashboard.
If your coaching program can stand the test of time, support quality will too.
Investing in support quality is really about making your customers happy. A happy customer is a loyal one and one far more likely to return the favor and invest in you.
About Horatio:
Horatio is a premier provider of the kind of white-glove support services your customers expect and deserve. We will work with you to design a support framework specifically for your brand and staff that framework with a handpicked team dedicated to your company’s success. Equipped with state-of-the-art technology and up-to-the-minute expertise, your team of customer service experts will provide excellence in service to your customers while ensuring you have the customer knowledge you need to keep your business running like a dream.
