Flying a plane involves managing all kinds of systems, gauges, communications, and cockpit controls. Throughout a flight, pilots keep a close eye on all these indicators. This way, if any deviations come up, they can make adjustments as needed to stay on course.
Like a pilot monitoring their instrument panel, you can rely on a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) to keep up on your company’s performance and make any necessary changes. In the eyes of customers, performance often depends on the support you provide before, during, and after their purchase.
Here’s more on customer service KPIs, and how to use them to ensure your customer service team is flying high and in the right direction.
What are customer service KPIs?
Customer service key performance indicators (KPIs) are key metrics that measure your company’s customer service performance and help you monitor customer relationships. These indicators provide a detailed understanding of your service quality and customer experience, including what you’re doing right and where to improve.
There are various customer service KPIs, and each offers different insights into your customer experience—valuable data you can use to improve customer satisfaction and better retain customers.
Opinion-based customer service KPIs
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
- Customer effort score (CES)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Employee satisfaction score (ESAT)
Opinion-based KPIs rely on feedback and can be measured through surveys, one-on-one conversations, or simple single-question ratings. Here are four examples:
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
A customer satisfaction score, ubiquitous in customer service, measures customer satisfaction with a specific customer interaction. Start by asking customers to rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 10 or 1 to 5, typically at the end of a service conversation. With this data, you can calculate CSAT in two ways:
You can treat only the highest ratings as positive and calculate your CSAT to see what percentage of your customers are satisfied with your service. You decide what counts as positive; some consider only the top two scores as positive (e.g., 9 and 10 on a 1 to 10 scale, or 4 and fiv5e on a 1 to 5 scale), while others accept anything from 6 to 10. It also depends on your industry.
Here’s the formula:
CSAT = (Number of satisfied customers / Total number of responses) × 100
You can also uncover your customers’ average sentiment by asking them to rate their satisfaction on a scale. Then divide the sum of their scores by the sum of the maximum possible scores, and multiply the result by 100.
Here’s the formula:
CSAT = (Sum of all scores / Sum of the maximum possible scores) × 100
Generally, a CSAT score above 80% means you’re providing top-notch customer service, while scores between 60% and 80% are considered good, and anything below 60% means you have opportunities to improve.
Customer effort score (CES)
A customer effort score measures how much effort a customer has to exert during a service interaction, by asking them to rate the ease of their experience. This is typically done with a single question like, “How easy was it to resolve your issue with us?” on a scale from one (very difficult) to 10 (very easy).
Here’s how to calculate a CES score as a percentage:
CES = (Number of positive responses / Number of survey responses) × 100
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net Promoter Score measures customer loyalty and overall satisfaction by asking customers how likely they are to recommend your company to others on a scale of 0 to 10. The framing of that question reflects a customer’s overall perception of your company, rather than their satisfaction with specific interactions.
Respondents who answer 9 or 10 are considered “promoters,” those who score 7 or 8 are “passives,” and those who score 6 and below are “detractors.”
To calculate your Net Promoter Score, use this formula:
NPS = % Promoters − % Detractors
Employee satisfaction score (ESAT)
An employee satisfaction score measures how satisfied your customer service employees are with your company, rather than focusing on customer satisfaction. Though not a direct or traditional customer success metric, your employees’ well-being impacts service quality, as happy employees are more likely to deliver exceptional customer care.
ESAT asks questions like, “How satisfied are you with the company you work for on a 1 to 5 scale?,” where a score of 4 or 5 is considered satisfied.
Once you’ve gathered responses, you can calculate your ESAT with this formula:
ESAT = (Total number of satisfied responses / Total number of responses) × 100
Efficiency-based customer service KPIs
Efficiency metrics measure the speed and effectiveness of your customer service team. Operational efficiency metrics provide hard numbers related to specific actions and response times to customer service requests. Here are three such indicators:
Average resolution time (ART)
Average resolution time is the average time it takes to resolve customer support requests and issues, from ticket creation to final resolution.
Here’s how to calculate average resolution time:
Average resolution time = Total time spent on tickets / Total number of tickets opened in a given period
You can improve average resolution time in a few ways, from better customer service training to efficient organization to hiring more customer support agents. To keep your finger on the pulse, monitor average resolution time for changes on a week-by-week or month-by-month basis.
First response time (FRT)
First response time measures how quickly your customer service representatives respond to new customer inquiries on average. This measurement excludes automatic responses and focuses on business hours (unless your customer service team is available 24/7).
You can measure FRT in minutes, hours, or days, depending on your business, using the following formula:
First response time = Total time between ticket submission and first response of all tickets in a given time period / Total number of tickets received in given time period
Ticket resolution rate
Ticket resolution rate measures the average number of tickets solved by customer service agents over a specific time frame. The time scale depends on the volume of requests and scope of your business—a high-volume operation might track this by the hour, while a smaller company with fewer customer service interactions may measure by day or week.
To calculate the tickets solved rate, use this formula:
Ticket resolution rate = Total number of tickets resolved in given time period / Total number of tickets received over the same period
Outcome-based metrics
This type of metric measures the overall outcomes of your customer support team. Paired with efficiency and opinion-based metrics, outcome-based KPIs can offer a comprehensive view of your company’s customer service experience.
Customer churn rate
Customer churn rate measures how many customers you’ve lost over a given period.
To calculate your churn rate, count your total customers at the start of the period, and count the total number of customers who churned during that period. This could be customers who canceled their subscriptions or simply customers who didn’t make a repeat purchase.
Here’s the formula:
Customer churn rate = (Customers who churned / Customers at start of month) × 100
Cost per resolution
Cost per resolution measures the average cost your business incurs for each customer support issue or case it resolves.
To calculate it, take the costs associated with running your customer support operation (e.g., staff salaries, customer service software subscriptions, etc.), then divide the total by the number of resolved customer support tickets during the same period.
Here’s the formula:
Cost per resolution = Total cost of customer support / Total number of tickets resolved
Abandon rate
Abandon rate measures how frequently customers abandon support tickets or phone calls. This metric, often used in a call center shows how often customers deem the interaction not worth continuing and hang up, indicating potential issues in your customer service operation.
To calculate the abandonment rate use this formula:
Abandon rate = (Total abandoned calls / Total calls) × 100
Ticket reopens
The ticket reopens KPI tracks how successful customer support resolutions are by counting the number of tickets that were closed and then reopened. This sheds light on customer service failures and repeated customer issues. Frequent ticket reopenings may indicate that your customer support team is addressing issues, but not providing lasting solutions to the original problem.
Customer service KPI FAQ
What are KPIs in customer service?
Key performance indicators (KPIs) in customer service are a wide array of customer service metrics that can be used to gain insight on your customer service performance. Customer service KPIs can include everything from customer feedback metrics to response times to overall customer churn.
What is an example of a customer service KPI?
There are several useful customer service KPIs, but one example is customer satisfaction score (CSAT), measured by asking a customer to rate an experience on a scale of one to 10. This customer service KPI can help you understand how customers feel about specific interactions with your company and help you improve customer retention.
What are the top three KPIs metrics that are critical for customer support to track?
Three common customer service KPIs you might track are customer satisfaction score (CSAT), customer churn rate, and Net Promoter Score (NPS).
