Top 6 Customer Service Metrics You Should Measure in 2024

Customer Service is one of the most essential areas of your business. They are in charge of a large part of your customer’s satisfaction and are also responsible for minimizing the level of churn. In fact, according to research by Gartner having great customer support is so important that 89% of companies are competing on the basis of which one will provide the best customer experience. 

As you can see, providing amazing customer service is pivotal. Keep on reading to find out about 5 customer service metrics that will help you track the performance of your customer service team. 

1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT is a customer service metric that measures the level of satisfaction received from the customer service representative. CSAT is an excellent metric to track since it gives you feedback on your customer service performance. You can see what needs improvement and what is working well You can easily implement CSAT by sending surveys to your customers after they are done talking to customer service representatives so that they can then rate their experience.

2. Average Handle Time (AHT)

Average Handle Time is a customer support metric that tells you the average length your customer service representative spends time on a call with a customer. Average Handle Time includes total talk time, total hold time, and the number of calls handled. According to Zendesk’s Customer Experience Trends Report, 66% of customers opt for resolving their concerns via phone so AHT is an important metric to track. AHT helps your team with reducing hold times, optimizing talk times, increasing the number of calls handled, and improving customer satisfaction.

3. Abandonment rate 

Abandonment rate measures the percentage of calls that ended before the concern was resolved including the percentage of customers that hung up before reaching an agent. This customer support metric tells you how much your customers find your customer service team helpful as well as the status of your service levels. It helps you measure the success of your customer service team so it’s really important to keep this rate below 10%. Having a high abandonment rate can be caused by a long hold time, or not having enough agents for all of the clients. Both of these ultimately negatively impact customer satisfaction. Having an abandonment rate of 5% is considered acceptable. 

4. Escalation rate 

The escalation rate measures the percentage of customers whose ticket has been escalated to a new level. This could be to a manager or supervisor, or specialist team. By tracking this customer service metric you will gain insights into potential problems with your product/service or customer service team itself. A high escalation rate can indicate that something about your product/service is unclear. If it’s often the case that customers are often requesting more detailed assistance, it might be worth running a few extra training sessions to bring your representatives up to speed. Whatever the reasons for escalation, it is likely to have a negative impact on customer satisfaction, so solving issues relating to this is crucial.

5. Agent utilization

With the agent utilization metric you are able to monitor how much your customer service representatives spend time on individual customers’ requests.. In short, it’s the ratio of representatives’ productivity to their time capacity. Agent utilization is a metric that you need to keep in constant balance. It affects your costs, and by maintaining a high agent utilization rate you can reduce the cost per ticket. But as said, you need to keep a healthy balance. Having an extremely high agent utilization will lead to employee burnout and unmotivated employees. This will likely increase employee turnover resulting in even higher costs to cover.

6. Repeat Contact Rate 

Also referred to as the Repeat Call Rate, this metric refers to the percentage of customers who reach out to customer service multiple times due to the same issue. Having to go over the same issue multiple times, eats into your agents’ valuable time and increases the queue for all customers. One of the most effective solutions for this problem could be creating self-service support where frequently asked questions are answered and explained by doing so you will be saving your time and your customer’s time. Some other solutions include implementing a last-agent routing system which means that you would redirect your customer to the last person they talked to since they are more familiar with the customer’s specific problem. Match the customer with a more experienced or specialized customer service representative can also cut down on time and increase efficiency. To tackle the core of the problem, it’s worth regularly training all of your representatives about ways to resolve problems and on new processes.

This is not the first time we are writing about how to optimize your customer service, check out 10 more customer service metrics that will keep you outperforming.

Plecto and customer service metrics

In order for all of this to come together you need to visualize it and motivate your employees with it. That’s where Plecto’s real-time customer service dashboards come in handy.

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