We know that:

• Not all companies need to provide exceptional customer service – just good enough service that is in-line with their brand.
• This service offering must work for the customer and work for the company.

We illustrate this outward-inward tension using a balanced scorecard of (1) cost of service, (2) customer satisfaction with the service experience, (3) ability to comply to company policy (and in heavily regulated industries this becomes very important – think HIPAA standards for healthcare) and (4) the ability to generate more sales.

These balanced scorecard metrics are hard to measure, and if they are measured, it is done after the service interaction has unfolded. But why can’t we measure them during the service interaction?

 - Cost of service – You should know the average cost of a process flow used to answer a customer’s question. What about measuring the cost of a single interaction as it unfolds and comparing it to this average? You could display this to the agent so that he knows how he is doing. And, if the cost of an interaction greatly exceeds the average, you could proactively route it to a Tier 2 agent or SME to ensure a good customer experience and a low cost interaction for you.

- Customer satisfaction – We use enterprise feedback management to survey customers after the fact, but what about surveying them during an interaction?

- Compliance – What about implementing programmatic ways for agents to follow company policy – for example applying BPM flows to customer service interactions, and not allowing an agent to proceed through the flow unless compliance steps are done?

There are new technology solutions that help with these real-time measurement activities which would allow you to be more proactive in the way that you deliver service. Do any of you do this already?

Wrong time of the year… I was trying to mimic Santa saying the name of the reindeer (you know, “Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!” – yeah, my brain is twisted sometimes, I know).

Anyway, The idea of this post is to begin a discussion on metrics in customer service.  I covered a little about it during the series of posts on customer acquisition costs and benefits (to refresh your mind, post 1, post 2, and post 3 – go on, read them – I’ll wait).  That was the beginning of a slippery slope.  Following that Pulitzer-prize-worthy series I began to spend more time thinking about it.  See, one of my charters here at eVergance is to start a Measurement practice and I have been doing some work with that, following early work I did work while at Gartner. I created some slides, and some beginning of a methodology and I am getting some good ideas about how to make it work.  I wanted to share my top three “discoveries” I made and get your opinions.

Discovery #1 – Yes, Virginia… feedback actually works.  Another poor reference, I know.  I have been advocating EFM (enterprise feedback management) since I created the concept while at that research firm named above (I am no name-dropper, once should be enough).  The idea is to tie the feedback you collect with existing data circulating through your enterprise.  Until not long ago we thought that doing so could improve product management, R&D, customer profiles, and BPM.  I am beginning to see Feedback differently now.  When used properly, and it works, it actually becomes the moving force that will help your measurement program progress from Reporting to Analytics to Continuous Improvement (think about this for a while… it is the subject of another post).

Discovery #2 – United we stand.  Promise, that was the last bad reference.  Most organizations have recently taken the idea of using scorecards, dashboards, and feedback.  Of course, they are all being used in separate projects or pilot programs – even some stand-alone deployments.  Well, guess what?  That reasoning is flawed… you have to use dashboards, scorecards, and feedback around the same subjects, same topics, and same processes.  That’s right – unite your projects and programs already in progress under one common name.  Call it… Continuous Improvement or something like that and enjoy the success.

Discovery #3 – Start small and go from there.  Now, most people look at Feedback or Measurement initiatives and get petrified by the sheer magnitude of the ultimate solution.  In most cases analysis paralysis takes over and the projects don’t advance or advance very slowly.  That, of course, is not the best way to do it.  You have to experiment, test the tools and your capabilities – see if you can make it work in your organization.  Start small.  Pick one area where you could benefit from (or test) a scorecard, a dashboard, an improved feedback or measurement initiative. “Play” with it and see what happens.  Then, take those lessons and begin to expand it across business units and eventually the organization.  Call the entire process something like, I don’t know, Continuous Improvement and work with it.

I hope that by now you got the subtle hints of what you are supposed to be doing.  Are you ready for Continuous Improvement?  What do you think about it?

It has been crazy and busy lately with EFM; I have been traveling the world spreading the word — and it has been so interesting.  It has amplified my views of EFM and given me lots of new ideas on what to do with this blog.  It has also given me an idea on spreading the word even faster: Twitter.  Do you twitter?  If not, you should check it out.  I am starting to spread the word on EFM via twitter — starting Monday October 13th, a new EFM insight a day via Twitter… tweet me!

I have been doing lots of thinking and working with EFM at the strategic level, and it led to me think about the need to implement EFM properly.  I am not simply talking about putting together a strategy for EFM, which I do endorse highly, but also where does it fit within the overall organizational approach to feedback.  In other words, why would an organization take on collecting, analyzing, and reporting on feedback?  After all, if you can do a survey and get some data – isn’t that enough?

Well, not quite.  The most interesting part of the question is actually what to do with the data and (more importantly) the insights collected and analyzed.  Yes, you can distribute a survey, collect some results, and report on them – even analyze them – and consider yourself done… but there is so much more.  Listen to this crazy, crazy approach to using EFM.

First, make a commitment to using feedback as valuable data.  That means you won’t just measure customer satisfaction, or yes / no to some inane questions that may, just may, earn you a bonus – but not create insights into your customers or products.  Make a commitment to using feedback wisely as a strategy, collecting and analyzing key business metrics over time.  Once you do this, you have the basis for the second step… building a dashboard.

Dashboards? how can they be related to feedback?  Well, you could build a dashboard simply by using efficiency metrics (number of calls, average handle time, average wait time, etc.), but wouldn’t you want to build one that means something for your business?  If you strategically determine the metrics that matter about your business, your services, your products — and the effectiveness-based metrics you must follow for the health of your business, you can then prepare a great real-time dashboard that shows you the health of your business — and tie those metrics to the feedback you collect!

Alas, once you create a real-time view of your important metrics, and use feedback to populate that – what about the long-term view?  Glad you asked (OK, you didn’t, I did).  Once you have a real-time, short-term view of your business it is time to make the jump to long-term, strategic measurement.  The tool we use for that is a scorecard.  Ah, yes… the scorecard.  You can use feedback to measure your key metrics over time, spot historical trends, and see where you have to invest time and resources to improve your products, services and resources.  And the best part?  You get to do this as your improve your use of feedback – from taking surveys, to adopting EFM, to implementing Dashboards and Scorecards.

Have you tried this?  Are you interested?  Let me know…