The Complete Guide to Defining Customer Service Goals for your Business
Whether your marketing goals are lofty and far-reaching or finite and quick to achieve, the most important element they provide is opportunity and momentum for improvement.
Things are now shifting more to the online space, particularly due to the past year, where many industries had to pivot from a primarily offline focus into unfamiliar territory online. In response, companies’ approach to customer service has become a quickly evolving landscape, and team members must stay adaptable.
Which is why it’s essential to have a way to monitor and focus on your goals. This article explains why customer service goals are essential and how to harness SMART tools to get ahead.
Why are customer service goals important?
It’s no secret that when people are on the same page, things go smoother. Customer service goals set measurable expectations and direction for the entire team, and helps each individual agent prioritize and align themselves and their work to these predetermined goals.
Goals also function as a precise benchmark for growth. If not consistently met, adjustment is needed. When proven effective, they allow your team to spend energy more efficiently, enabling better customer service and leading to improved customer retention.
Understanding S.M.A.R.T. and the 3 types of goals every team needs
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound.
Think of it like a New Year’s resolution. One could say their aim for the year is to “read more novels” but what does that mean? How do you measure that? Instead, you can provide a specific number like 35 books in the time frame of one year.
If that seems too lofty, you can further break it down by saying that 35 books are (roughly) three books a month – or one hour of reading a day, which gives you something tangible to hold yourself accountable for completing the action. Automatically, the task seems less daunting than the concept of reading 35 books at some point in the year.
This type of thinking is vital in fields like customer service, where burnout can be a prevalent concern. If employees believe a goal or quota is unattainable, their motivation is low, and they might not even attempt it as they feel set up for failure either way.
Having distinct milestones tells your reps what quantifiable or qualitative goals to look for to measure their progress. It’s also important to consider the relevancy of said goals. If they don’t contribute to the company’s overall mission, they might not be necessary to focus on.
There are three types of SMART goals:
- Process-based: tasks or behaviors that improve specific areas and lead to desired performance outcomes.
- Performance-based: target or standard-based goals, focused on results.
- Outcome-based: goals based on a result, or the end outcome.
Best practices when setting up effective customer goals
First and foremost, it’s important to evaluate your current processes and identify patterns and trends from historical information. To put it simply, what’s working and what’s not? Pull metrics from the past few years and mark areas that need the most adjustment. Be ambitious with your goals. While it’s good to remain realistic, if the bar is set too low, your team’s motivation will be too.
Secondly, benchmarking goals into short- and long-term, in alignment with company goals can boost team morale and productivity without adding pressure. There is comradery in common goals and of consensus of pride when they’re achieved together.
Choosing the right metrics means considering overarching company goals like reducing churn and generating repeat business. The selected metrics may vary over time but will fall into the three categories mentioned above of SMART goals. Knowing where to place your team’s energy during periods of different or evolving growth is invaluable. Create goals such as increasing first-response rates (performance), automating tasks like follow-up emails (process), and increasing customer satisfaction rates (outcome).
Keeping employee morale in mind is also paramount. Direct and frequent communication is crucial at all levels. Have monthly or weekly review meetings to discuss goal progress. A clear link has been found between a lack of control and burnout, resulting in a high turnover rate. When employees feel like they can influence decisions that affect their work, they’re more likely to experience job engagement.
Plain and simple: people need to feel like they matter.
Customer Service goals to set for your team in 2021
Process
#1 Automate manual tasks
Automation increases productivity by allowing your team to use energy more effectively throughout the day. Creating and updating canned responses to frequently asked questions will also save your team time and get answers to customers sooner.
#2 Collaborate between teams efficiently
Support agents are often required to do a lot of back and forth when it comes to complex customer issues. But with efficient cross-functional collaboration in place, support agents can bring in accountability by discussing with or tagging non-support teams and external stakeholders to resolve customer issues.
#3 Simplify your customer service process
Tools like Asana, Slack, Airtable, and Trello help organize and condense tasks and connect your team faster throughout the day. The fewer minute tasks that have to be done, the speedier your team’s productivity rate will be, allowing them to focus on more pressing issues.
#4 Leverage AI to elevate both agent and customer experience
By implementing AI-driven customer service, your team can set up zero-touch resolutions with automatic answers, predictive suggestions, and personalize engagement. On the agent side, AI assists save invaluable time by helping with response suggestions, automatic ticket type determination, identifying social signals, and so on.
#5 Digitize documentation and management tasks
The switch to remote work for many teams in 2020 required a lot of in-office tasks and correspondence to become digital. Although, arguably, the implementation provides a much more efficient alternative in general. Making all documentation digital allows for a quicker turnaround time between team members and customers, making the process less of a headache for everyone.
Performance
#1 Set achievable targets for your customer service team.
Make sure your goals are realistic. If your team members average 40 tickets a day, it doesn’t make sense to increase that goal to 100. Something like 45-50 (a 10-25% increase) would be more attainable.
#2 Improve the speed and efficiency of customer service
Nobody likes hassle. The worst thing for a customer is misinformation, multiple transfers, or repeating themselves when explaining a problem. 53% of customers say they want faster response times. To address this, try implementing goals like responding to tickets in under 4 hours.
#3 Improve the quality of customer service
We’re all human (and like to be treated as such). Your customer service reps represent your business and are the main point of contact for customers.
Think of it this way, how often do you return to a store where you’ve had bad service? Salesforce found that 76% of customers report it’s easier than ever to take their business elsewhere to companies that provide a better experience.
Create performance goals such as increasing weekly CSAT scores by x% in the next three months. Continued training, an internal knowledge base, and attention to reviews will identify areas for improvement and help curate your best team.
Outcome
#1 Make support frictionless and more accessible to customers
If it’s possible, let customers help themselves. A statistic shows that 76% of customers will try to solve the problem themselves before reaching out to a representative, and 67% prefer self-service over talking to someone. Providing self-service portals or chatbots gives service to customers and decreases stress for your team by lowering ticket numbers and focusing reps’ efforts on high-level issues.
#2 Create an omnichannel customer experience
The easier it is for your customers to find you, the more they will return. Utilize social media, live chat, and email to interact with your customer base and make sure all platforms connect correctly.
#3 Make customer service more proactive and real-time
Create or utilize a customer journey map. A journey map provides your team with touchstones that allow them to keep up with the request’s cadence and stay one step ahead of the customer’s needs. Journey map analysis can also help you identify inconsistent experiences across all touchpoints.
Examples of Customer Service Goals
Examples of CS goals for the team:
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Improve satisfaction by x%.
Some metrics to keep in mind for this would be the average time to first response, the number of interactions per resolution, and the overall resolution rate. Therefore a SMART goal to come from these metrics could include improving NPS (Net Promoter Score) by 10% by (date).
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Reduce resolution times by y%.
Look at the number of interactions per resolution and the average length of handling to the volume of requests. A possible goal to consider would then be reducing the average handling time for resolving customer issues from (time) to (time) by (date).
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Reduce customer effort.
The first contact resolution rate (percentage of issues handled within first interaction) and the number of cases/tickets related to specific topics (e.g., installation or upgrades) are key metrics to analyze to solve quicker, more commonplace issues. An example of a goal: increase first contact resolution rate at (percent) by (date).
Examples of CS manager/lead goals:
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Improve team SLA (service-level agreement) attainment.
SLA metrics define expectations in a business relationship and establish how well the service provider meets those expectations. These include response time metrics that result in goals such as increasing follow-up emails by (amount) every (time) by (date).
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Ensure employee motivation and satisfaction.
Remember to incentivize your team members. Some metrics to keep in mind to do so would be evaluating the length of interaction and volume of tickets per agent.
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Increase customer advocacy.
Remember the customer journey map here. Look at customer effort metrics to structure customer service goals around proactive measures like improving customer effort scores from (percent) to (percent) by (date).
Examples of Agent Goals:
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Improve response time by x%.
Learning to troubleshoot effectively is a skill every customer service rep needs. Not being able to quickly, and more importantly, accurately diagnose problems will slow overall response times. Incorporating troubleshooting goals
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Increase ticket closure rate by y%.
As your team utilizes more streamlining processes, their times will improve, allowing space for them to focus on efficiency metrics.
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Have CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) of at least z%
Having a baseline goal is an essential part of benchmarking progress. Incrementally upping that baseline provides an attainable goal that reflects your team’s continued efforts.
In Summation
Whether it’s checking metrics, adjusting processes, or improving performance, don’t expect to set perfect goals immediately. Goals (no matter how SMART) will shift and evolve over time. What’s important is having a way to monitor your progress and revise when needed.
When done properly, your agents, team, and organization perform better, which leads to better overall customer outcomes. That’s something everyone can get excited about.
