Metrics For The Performance Of Social Customer Service Teams.
It is a given that the consumer has an immeasurable amount of power – within the social media space they seem to have even more power. The social media zeitgeist has therefore brought about new employment opportunities, as well as entry into a completely new stream of revenue generation for business. Customer service agents, like consumers, are no longer confined to call centres, retail stores, and/or tangible help-desks; many work from where-ever they happen to be at the time.
Fundamentally customer service means the same no matter where it is coming from. But that having been said, traditional measurables don’t completely seem to apply. Currently customer service performance appraisal in this space seems to have been difficult to devise. It is not receiving the same kind of attention, as say for example – conversion to sales.
The revolution in this form of communication; its momentum is massive, and growing exponentially. Consumers are consuming by the megaton on the run, which has warranted the need for business to evolve their customer services teams, into teams on the run. Bearing the flexibility of the social space in mind, a new set of metrics should be established to measure the effectiveness of these teams.
Metrics pundits believe that a new type of teamwork needs to devolve within businesses. Previously there were very few firms where marketing and customer service tasks overlapped, but this has changed in the social space. A distorting of demarcation lines calls for different measures to evaluate how effectively a team is responding.
For example in the social sphere, a marketing agent may receive a request for support, while an order related question might end up in the lap of a member of the support team. It pays here to remember, that these agents are few, need to be trained to handle all queries, and virtually almost in real time.
Today, large organisations are making massive monetary investments in the social media space. They therefore need to know if they are operating efficiently. Return on investments is relative to value proposition. A very simple explanation might be – if the firm prides itself on responding to a social post within an hour, the key performance indicators of the agent should reflect this. Then the agent would need to be tracked to ensure that this was in fact taking place.
Various types of businesses operate on various value propositions. Some compete on satisfaction measures, while others compete on cost. These value propositions determine whether satisfaction measures are primary, or if efficiency and productivity are. The firms’ objectives are the factors that customer service teams use to measure their goals. So their key performance indicators are designed to reflect these goals; thereby forming the benchmark of metrics for the team.
Obviously business online is different from anything else this world has ever seen. It is business without borders, which makes it unique from say; walking into Macy’s NYC and buying a pair of sheepskin boots. Now we can buy a pair of sheepskin boots from Macy’s, using our mobile phone, and very cold thumbs, from a Mount Everest situated base-camp. So, choosing metrics for the delivery of a mega-wad of data that might be used to boost our business into the stratosphere actually needs to be kept simple. While customer service efforts do need to be measured, streamlining is also important.
