Customer service is the practice of providing support, assistance, and guidance to customers before, during, and after a purchase. This can include activities such as answering customer questions, providing product information, offering technical support, and handling complaints and returns. Customer service is an essential part of the customer experience and can have a major impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Effective customer service involves providing timely, accurate, and helpful assistance to customers. This can be done through a variety of channels, such as phone, email, chat, or in-person. In order to provide high-quality customer service, companies need to have well-trained and knowledgeable staff who are able to handle a wide range of customer inquiries and issues.

Good customer service can help to build trust and loyalty with customers. By providing timely, helpful assistance, companies can demonstrate that they value their customers and are committed to meeting their needs. This can help to increase customer satisfaction and retention, leading to higher sales and revenue.

On the other hand, poor customer service can damage a company’s reputation and lead to customer frustration and dissatisfaction. This can result in lost customers and revenue, as well as negative word-of-mouth and online reviews. Therefore, it is important for companies to prioritize customer service and invest in the training and support necessary to provide high-quality assistance to customers.

In conclusion, customer service is an essential part of the customer experience and can have a major impact on a company’s success. By providing timely, helpful, and accurate assistance to customers, companies can build trust, increase satisfaction, and improve their bottom line. The following are examples of measurable customer service goals.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a measure of customer experience that is determined by simply asking customers to rank their satisfaction on a scale. Improve customer satisfaction by planning for common service interactions and reviewing ways that service can succeed or fail. Goal: customer satisfaction to 80% or higher.

Churn Rate

Churn rate is the percentage of your customers who cancel their accounts in a period of time, usually a month. Reduce the churn rate of customer accounts by automatically informing them when there is a problem with their service and updating them as to when the issue is expected to be resolved. Goal: reduce churn to 5.7% per month from the current rate of 6.6%

Customer Experience

Measuring specific elements of the customer experience. Increase the number of customers who are granted complementary early check-in by 60% by updating the status of rooms every 40 minutes as opposed to the current process that can take as long as 3 hours.

Customer Perceptions

Measuring specific elements of the customer experience in terms of customer perceptions. Increase the percentage of customers who rate our self-service tools as useful to 65% from the current rating of 15%.

Response Time

The response time for customer requests such as a question submitted through digital channels. This is usually measured as the time from customer request to a response by a person. In other words, automated responses are often not included.
Increase response time for order inquiries by 44% to 3 hours or less.

Turnaround Time

Turnaround time measures end-to-end service times from the customer’s perspective. Decrease the turnaround time for drink orders to rooms to 7 minutes from 18 minutes.

Throughput

Throughput is the amount of work completed in a period of time. Increase the throughput of the customer service desk to 2.6 guests a minute for the morning rush by streamlining the checkout process.

Service Quality

Measuring elements of service quality and targeting improvements. Increase the on-time performance of high speed train services to 99.5% from the current rate of 98.9%.

Interaction Quality

The quality of customer interactions such as the percentage of customers who feel that a question was answered well. Improve the percentage of order cancellation requests that result in a canceled order by requiring partners to accept cancellation requests if the order hasn’t been sent yet. Target: improve successful order cancellations to 70% from the current rate of 45%.

Productivity

Productivity measures such as the number of passengers checked-in by an airline counter per employee per hour. Improve check-in productivity to 23 passengers per representative per hour by assigning staff to help customers with self-service check-in.

Service Levels

Service levels are goals for the performance of a service such as the call abandonment rate of a call center. Reduce call abandonment rate to 8.4%.

Quality Control

Quality control is the practice of measuring and monitoring service quality. Increase quality control monitoring by 40% to 1.2 million calls a month.

Revenue

Customer service teams may have revenue generating functions. Generate revenue from upgrades at the check-in counter of $1.2 million a month.

Sales Volume

Sales volume is the practice of counting revenue in units. Generate 1200 upgrades to business class at the check-in counter each month.

Cost Effectiveness

Cost effectiveness is the cost required to produce a desired result. Reduce the cost of customer referrals by 11% to $87.40.

Customer Acquisition Cost

Customer acquisition cost is the total cost of obtaining a new customer. Reduce customer acquisition cost to $211 by introducing rewards for customer referrals.

Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value is the average total spend of a customer before you lose them to a competitor. This is a function of churn and revenue per customer per month. Increase customer lifetime value to $5,000 by offering more rewards for frequent stays.

Customer Recovery

The percentage of customers who were at risk of leaving who you manage to retain. Improve customer recovery to 50% by offering to wave fees for a year when customers of more than 5 years try to cancel their accounts.

Share of Wallet

Share of wallet is the percentage of customers spend on a product category that goes to you. Increase share of wallet to 40% for private banking clients.

Occupancy Rate

Occupancy rate is the utilization of a space for a customer that occurs at a time and a place such as a seat on a flight. Improve the dinner time occupancy rate of the 3rd floor restaurants to 80% by offering coupons to guests at check-in.

Attach Rate

Attach rate is the percentage of customers who accept an upsell offer. Increase the attach rate for inflight duty free purchases to 9.5% by providing a catalog in the seat pocket on each eligible flight.

Ratings & Reviews

Targets for ratings, reviews and social media feedback. Improve ratings for the hotel to above 4 stars on popular travel sites by aggressively offering free upgrades at check-in to fully utilize our inventory of premium rooms.

Feedback & Engagement

Targets for gathering feedback, ratings and ideas from customers. Engage customers to get their ideas. Target: 20 or more customer ideas for service improvement documented by customer advocates.

Complaint Count

The number of complaints, issues or problems that are reported to you by customers. Reduce customer complaints about construction noise by explaining the current situation when they book a room and again when they check-in. Goal: reduce complaints by 50% and improve customer satisfaction by 10% by apologizing upfront and keeping the customer informed.

Service Culture

Service culture are intangible elements of a team that impact customer service such as attitude towards customers. Sample tone, demeanor and professional language to measure and improve the friendliness of staff at the front desk. Goal: measure 5% of interactions, baseline and improve by 20%.