Customer service KPIs: the five that really matter

Modern systems measure dozens of values. Five are enough to steer a customer service team. They show whether customers get through, whether their issue is solved and how they experience the contact. Here is what each metric means, how to measure it and where it can mislead you.

Availability and response time

The service level tells you how many calls are answered within a set time. A common benchmark is 80/20: 80 percent of calls within 20 seconds. Which value suits you depends on how urgent your customers' calls are. Someone reporting an emergency waits less patiently than someone with a question about an invoice.

Measure the service level per half hour, not just per day. A good daily figure can hide a bad hour on Monday morning. Also look at the abandonment rate: how many callers hang up before anyone answers?

For email and chat, what counts is the response time, meaning the time until the first real reply. An automatic confirmation of receipt does not count. In chat it is a matter of seconds to a few minutes, for email it is hours. Set a separate target for each channel.

First contact resolution and handling time

First contact resolution, FCR for short, shows the share of issues that are settled on the first contact. For customers it often matters more than any waiting time. Anyone who has to call twice is annoyed, no matter how quickly the first call was answered.

Measuring FCR precisely is difficult. Two methods are common: you check whether the same person gets in touch again within, for example, seven days, or you ask directly after the conversation. What matters is that the method stays the same, so you can compare weeks.

Average handling time, AHT for short, is made up of talk time, hold time and after-call work. It is above all a planning figure. Together with the contact volume, it tells you how many agents you need at what time.

Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction, CSAT for short, is usually collected with a single question right after the contact, for example on a scale from 1 to 5. The share of ratings of 4 or 5 is counted. Keep the survey short. One question and a free text field bring more answers than ten questions.

Read the comments, not just the number. Often the reason for a poor rating is not the agent but a policy, a product defect or a delivery.

Common traps

• Pressure on handling time. If you measure agents by a short AHT, you get short calls but unsolved issues. Customers call again, first contact resolution drops and volume rises. Use AHT for planning, not as a target for individuals.
• Only averages. An average hides outliers. Also look at the longest waiting times and the oldest open tickets.
• One metric on its own. Every figure can be improved at the expense of another. Always look at all five together.
• Few survey responses. With low participation, CSAT fluctuates a lot. Assess trends over several weeks, not single days.

The weekly report at krejton

At krejton we agree on the metrics with you at the start, usually two or three of these five, matched to your channels. Every week you receive a short report with the figures, the trend over recent weeks and a few sentences of context: what went well, what stands out and what we are changing.

If you already use a ticketing or phone system, the figures come straight from it. That way you see the same values as we do.