How to organize the work of support services and monitor its effectiveness

Let us take a look at the main indicators that will help to objectively evaluate the work of the support.

Working on the KPI system is an opportunity to successfully communicate with your staff and monitor the performance.

KPI means "Key Performance Indicators", which help to evaluate the performance of the staff and show each employee how he/she works. This makes it easy to draw up a plan for each employee and determine the goals that have to be achieved during the designated period.

For example, for call center operators in the frames of KPI, you can determine the number of calls, the total number of sales per day/month/year. You can implement KPI in your business by setting personal goals for individual employees or the entire support department.

KPI staff evaluations relate to common business goals. This way you can measure key factors that will affect your business success and also identify those, which need to be strengthened, refined and implemented.

The factors that you choose as a performance measure should relate directly to the main activities of your business. For example, KPI can be used to estimate:

• additional sales;
  
• the quality of negotiations;
  
• customer referrals;
  
• the staff turnover.
  

In the frames of KPI, you can consider:

• the number of applications;
  
• the number of applications processed by one specialist per day;
  
• the time which one employee needs for processing one application (on average);
  
• how many applications are listed closed, not resolved and are forwarded next;
  
• the number of additional sales;
  
• customer feedback on the employee's performance
  

KPI should allow you to identify the development dynamics of the support department, its financial and other value for your company. Be sure that you keep records of all your results after implementing the method of studying and recording KPI. Following this, you can track performance over time.

Before you make a plan for the development of the department, it is necessary to implement efficiency assessments. They will contribute to better statistical data collection. To evaluate the work of the support, you need to divide the structure. As a rule, a support department is divided into several levels of employees:

Each specialist level is evaluated differently. This allows you to get an objective result.

For example, an employee of the dispatcher level processes about 20 calls from clients per day, and a second-level specialist – only 10. But based on this, you cannot say that a second-level specialist is inefficient and does not work well. This indicator is not universal, as it does not give an objective assessment.

The main directions in the work of employees of the first level:

Let us highlight the main metrics for each level of specialists and divide them into general sections: speed and volume, quality and degree of customer satisfaction.

Speed and volume KPI conventionally include:

• The total number of the received applications. It will help to track the growth in a number of calls, customer problems and it will also show whether there is a need in expanding the department.
  

• Response time to the customer. If this is a call: how much time a user is waiting on the line. A letter: how quickly the response is sent back; are there any customers who haven't get a response? This is a fundamental factor for speed goals.
  

• Processing time. How much time does a specialist need to process an application after its receiving? It can be described as the speed of customer service.
  

Each of these indicators should be evaluated in aggregate and don't forget to take into account the specifics of the business.

Call-center KPI, which assess the quality of the employee's performance:

1. Classification of applications. The percentage of applications that are not required to be reclassified. This indicator measures the effectiveness of each individual employee.
   
   
2. The percentage of correctly processed applications. How accurately the technical support has understood the client's problem and determined what kind of specialist is needed to solve the problem.
   
   
3. The percentage of customer problems solved during the call. The evaluation includes the number of customers who are satisfied with the dispatcher's work.

Customer satisfaction is:

• referrals, feedbacks, customer ratings;
  
• the percentage of applications that received a call-back.
  

In order to check the work of the support, you can contact the clients for help. If you have not implemented any methods of fixing the work of technical support, then only customers will tell you the truth.

After conducting a survey of 10 clients, note that a lot of information is repeated. What your customers say is important. If three of them have noted the long processing of the application, then it is worth finding out the reasons for each delay and optimizing the process.

Ways of interviewing customers:

• a questionnaire or surveys;
  
• add one-click estimation;
  
• record calls with clients and then listen to them.
  

The forms of communication with the support department are also different. How technical support can be provided:

• by hotline number;
  
• via a chat on the company's website;
  
• via a messenger.
  

Depending on this, you should choose the most convenient way to systematize information. For example, on the hotline, the recording of a conversation and post-questioning (when a client puts a rate) works most efficiently.

In the case of chats, a client is offered to evaluate the communication:

Another factor worth paying attention to is humanity. A client doesn't want to communicate with a bot.

Therefore, a formal way of communication will be a significant disadvantage for the business. It is necessary to achieve not only a convenient format of communication but also to "give" a real person to a client.

You can use stickers and GIF-animation. Send clients videos with cats if you need more time to search for information.

Support department provides an opportunity to increase customer loyalty and sell additional products or services. In order to track the effectiveness of the support (KPI), it is necessary to determine the most important measured metrics.

Basically, the support department is divided into dispatchers, second-level specialists, and managers. For each level of employees, different metrics are used.

The first-level employees should be able to assess the speed and volume of work, quality and customer satisfaction.

For the second level:

• respect the deadlines;
  
• the ratio of the number and priorities;
  
• the quality of the closed tickets;
  
• value for the company.