Smart home support teams have one primary goal: to help customers with any technical problems they run into with devices. By definition, a goal is measurable—so you need a way to track your progress toward that goal.
That’s where key performance indicators (KPIs) can help. They give you a way to define and measure your support team’s goals, so you can see how the team is performing day to day.
So which KPIs should your team be tracking? And how do you measure them?
Note: Every team has a different goal, and team members tend to work differently. What spells success for one team won’t for another. So don’t forget to consider your support organization’s goals when setting KPIs!
Customer effort score (CES)
Customer effort score measures how much effort a customer needs to put in to reach your support team. It’s an important one for customer satisfaction; the lower this score is and the easier it is for them to reach you, the happier customers will be.
How to measure it: Though it’s subjective, CES can tell you a lot about how customers feel about contacting your team. Typically, you would gather this answer from customers in the form of a scale question, and look for differences between customer perspectives and internal ones.
Average first response time (AFRT)
Average first response time measures the length of time a customer needs to wait for the first response from your support team. This time usually varies depending on the platform; a customer might wait 20 seconds for an automated phone response, but up to 10 hours for a Facebook reply.
How to measure it: Measuring this KPI depends on the platform. For phone calls, it’s a matter of setting up your system to respond within a certain time frame, and monitoring the records to make sure it’s doing what you want. For emails and social media messages, you can use timestamps to monitor response speed. You can either treat them as platform-specific averages, or combine them for an overall.
Average hold time
No one likes to be on hold, but it does happen from time to time. Your average hold time measures how long customers are on hold after your first response, but before they get to where they need to be.
How to measure it: This is a relatively straightforward metric that you can measure by checking contact records to see when customers exit navigation menus and when agents pick up. Then, add your times together and divide by the number of calls.
Average handle time (AHT)
Your average handle time measures how long it takes your support agents to completely resolve an issue. Because it impacts nearly every other KPI on this list, AHT is easily one of the most important KPIs for any support team.
How to measure it: Where previous KPIs on this list focused on specific parts of the process, AHT looks at the big picture. To calculate it, add up your hold time, talk time, and any other follow-up time (including calls, emails, and other points of contact), then divide them by the total number of reported issues.
First call resolution (FCR)
Sometimes also defined as first contact resolution, this KPI is the golden child of support teams. It measures how effectively your team can resolve issues on the first call. When your team can resolve an issue the first time a customer reaches out, that has a snowball effect on other KPIs on this list, including AHT, hold time, CSAT, and more.
How to measure it: FCR has a lot of prerequisites to determine before you can measure it. You’ll need to decide what constitutes a resolution, what the window should be between a first call and a potential second call, and whether customer satisfaction should play a role. Then, take the sum of issues that get resolved on the first call, and divide by total issues to get a percentage.
Return merchandise authorization (RMA)
A return merchandise authorization is a key part of the returns process, and usually comes into play after an agent has gone through all appropriate troubleshooting steps. When a support agent issues an RMA, it means the device failed troubleshooting, and the customer has decided to return their device.
How to measure it: This is a straightforward metric, and can be measured just by tracking issued RMAs in your system. Then, compare them to the total number of issues reported to see how many devices are being returned because issues couldn’t be resolved. This can give you an idea of where your team can improve, so more of those issues get resolved.
Abandoned call rate (ACR)
Your abandoned call rate measures how many customers disconnect before getting through to an agent. The numbers can vary throughout the day with caseload, and often get confused with disconnects, lost calls, or short calls.
How to measure it: To find your ACR, subtract your handled/short/disconnected calls from total calls, then divide that result by the total number of calls to get a percentage.
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
This KPI gives your support team insight into how happy customers are with your service. It quantifies customer satisfaction based on the interactions they have with your team, and can help you spot strengths and weaknesses in your service.
How to measure it: CSAT information usually comes in through post-call surveys. This might be a quick survey at the end of a call, a follow-up call or email, or even a text asking the customer to rate their experience on a scale and add comments if desired. Divide the number of positive responses by the total responses to get a percentage.
Net promoter score (NPS)
NPS takes customer satisfaction and turns it into a quantifiable power of promotion for your company. Instead of simply measuring satisfaction, it considers how likely they are to promote your business depending on their overall experience.
How to measure it: To measure NPS, ask customers how likely they are to promote your company on a scale of zero to 10. Then, subtract the percentage of detractors (zero to six) from the percentage of promoters (nine to 10) to determine your score.