While every business wants to optimize and improve its customer service experience, it can be challenging to identify exactly which areas need improvement. Identifying those areas requires using KPIs, metrics that offer businesses a strategic way to gain actionable, data-driven insights into their customer service strategies.
In this article, we’ll explore 25 of the most effective and important customer service KPIs your business needs to track and provide simple, easy-to-follow calculations for each one.
Jump right to:
- What are customer service KPIs
- The importance of tracking KPIs for customer service
- 25 top customer service KPIs to track
<h2 id="What">What are customer service KPIs?</h2>
Customer service key performance indicators (KPIs) are crucial metrics that allow service teams to track, analyze, and optimize their performance and support strategies.
Among many others, KPIs for customer service can include:
- Ticket resolution times
- Agent response times
- Agent productivity
- Upsell rates
- Customer retention rates
These performance metrics allow businesses to gain key insights into crucial factors such as customer satisfaction and workflow efficiency. Textline’s head of customer experience, Jenny Lou, says that tracking KPIs helps customer service teams “meet goals, boost customer satisfaction, and make data-driven decisions.”
<h2 id="Importance">The importance of tracking KPIs for customer service</h2>
Tracking key performance indicators for customer service can enable your business to improve the overall customer experience and reduce churn, in turn creating revenue and increasing retention.
For example, customer service KPIs can:
- Increase customer satisfaction. Teams that regularly track and analyze performance are generally invested in elevating customer experience and providing exceptional customer service.
- Identify problems. KPIs can help leadership identify areas where further training or improvement is needed and can prevent issues from arising before they happen.
- Reveal product issues. If there are rapidly increasing numbers of support tickets for one product, it’s likely a sign that customers are having issues with that specific product and adjustments are required.
- Track progress to goals. Without proper KPIs, it’s difficult to set realistic goals and impossible to know when teams are meeting goals or falling short. Tracking performance metrics provides data that can streamline goal setting and identify successful tactics for improvement.
- Reduce costs. Regular tracking is key for effectively allocating resources, staffing, and reducing churn.
- Boost productivity. Tracking KPIs for both individual team members and service teams at large can provide performance evaluation data, clarify organization directives and individual responsibilities, and offer data-backed solutions for employee development.
<h2 id="Top">25 top customer service KPIs to track</h2>
The following metrics are a collection of the most important KPIs businesses leverage to track customer service success.
Customer Satisfaction Score
This KPI is a linchpin metric for analyzing the performance of your customer service team. The customer satisfaction score (CSAT) measures how happy the customer is with your service team, usually on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10.
The goal of this metric is to gauge how well the customer’s experience met their expectations. An excellent customer satisfaction score is between 85 to 90 percent.
CSAT score calculation:
Net Promoter Score
The net promoter score (NPS) metric measures, on a scale of 1-10, how likely your customers are to recommend your business to others in their network. Customers are grouped based on the following results:
- Detractors: scores 0-6
- Passives: scores 7 and 8
- Promotors: scores 9 and 10
The goal of this metric is to determine customer satisfaction. An ideal NPS is a score of 50 and above.
NPS calculation:
Customer Effort Score
This metric measures the effort your customer feels they expended resolving their issue. The customer effort score (CES) survey can be used to identify areas of discontinuity and friction within your service lifecycle.
The goal of the CES is to understand how simple or complicated the customer found their service experience. On a scale of 1 to 10, a score of 7 or above is considered ideal.
CES calculation:
Sentiment analysis score
The sentiment analysis score is an AI-driven metric that utilizes natural language processing (NLP) to analyze — and subsequently score — the tone, attitude, and expression of a customer during a service interaction. The sentiment analysis score gauges whether a customer feels positive, neutral, or negative about their experience using data. It can give businesses a good idea of how customers feel about their products, services, and brand.
The primary goal of the sentiment analysis metric is to give customer service representatives insights into their customers' emotions and satisfaction levels. The ultimate goal is to reduce churn and boost retention. On a scale of 0 to 100, an ideal sentiment score should be above 80.
How to get a sentiment analysis score:
If you don’t have access to sentiment insights through your customer service software, invest in AI-powered sentiment analysis tools that specify features like real-time analysis and CRM integration.
Customer retention rate
This key metric measures the number of customers who remain with your business over a specified period of time. High customer retention rates (CRRs), or scores typically over 80 percent, can signify customer loyalty, positive customer experiences, and high product or service quality.
The goal of the customer retention rate metric is to understand how many customers remain with your business after the initial transaction.
CRR calculation:
You’ll need to identify a specific period of time to measure. Then, use the following calculation:
Customer churn rate
This metric is used to identify the number of customers who stop doing business with your company during a certain period of time.
The goal of identifying your customer churn rate is to keep track of the amount of lost revenue and ensure rates decrease or remain stable. While the ideal churn rate is 0 percent, the average rate for most businesses is between 5 to 7 percent.
Customer churn rate calculation:
After identifying a specific period of time to measure, use the following calculation:
Customer save rate
The customer save rate metric measures the amount of prevented cancellations by customer service.
The goal of this KPI is to understand the efficacy of your customer service team at resolving issues, preventing cancellations, and retaining customers. The higher the save rate, the better.
Customer save rate calculation:
First reply time
The first reply time (FRT) metric measures how long it takes a customer service representative to send their first response to a submitted support ticket. Calculating the first reply time indicates how quickly customers are receiving service responses and the productivity of agents.
The primary goal of the FRT metric is to measure the overall effectiveness and promptness of support staff and their ability to handle fluctuations in ticket volume. Depending on the channel, the ideal first reply time ranges from two minutes for live chat to within an hour or two for email.
FRT calculation:
Average reply time
This metric gauges how long it takes an agent to respond to each message from the customer, not just the initial outreach.
The primary goal of the average reply time metric (ART) is to measure the average time your customers are waiting for a reply. As reply times are generally a source of satisfaction or discontent for customers, ensuring your customer service team has a low ART is key to providing a positive customer experience.
When calculating the ART for your team, do not include messages sent by automated chatbots.
ART calculation:
Average resolution time
The average resolution time measures the total amount of time that elapses between the creation and closure of a support ticket. The length of this metric can vary depending upon issue complexity, but lower resolution times should generally be the goal.
Average resolution time calculation:
Average ticket touches
The average ticket touches metric gauges the number of times an agent interacts with a customer via a messaging channel before the issue is resolved.
This metric can be more difficult to measure, as certain customers may require more communication and touches than others, or certain complex ticket issues may take more back-and-forth to resolve. However, looking at the overall touches per ticket can be useful to ensure representatives are prepared and well-trained.
Average ticket touches calculation:
First contact resolution
First contact resolution (FCR) measures the percentage of customer inquiries that are resolved on the first interaction. Sometimes called one-touch resolution, FCR does not include tickets that require a callback or transfer to resolve.
Customers appreciate quick issue resolution and a higher FCR rate generally correlates with higher customer satisfaction rates.
FCR calculation:
Ticket escalation rate
This metric is used to measure the number of tickets that are escalated to a person of higher or more specialized knowledge.
While not always negative and sometimes necessary, escalations are generally something to avoid. Ideally, service representatives have the necessary knowledge base to solve the majority of customer tickets without escalation.
The goal of the ticket escalation rate metric is to access the resolution skills of the support team.
Ticket escalation rate calculation:
Number of resolved tickets
This KPI shows the total number of resolved tickets within a given time frame. The goal of this metric is to ensure that ticket resolution goals are being met by your support team.
Keep in mind that factors like complexity, customer attitude, and ticket prioritization could all affect the number of resolved tickets.
Resolved ticket calculation:
After selecting a measurable period of time, use the following calculation:
Repeat contact rate
The repeat contact rate (RCR) is designed to measure how many times a customer has to reach out to your support team regarding an unresolved ticket.
The goal of this metric is to assess the effectiveness of your support team in resolving issues proactively. Low contact rates indicate customer satisfaction and likely mean that the issue was resolved upon initial contact.
RCR calculation:
Ticket backlog
This metric measures the number of support tickets waiting to be resolved by your support team. Backlogged tickets are support requests that have been unresolved outside of the normal response time due to issues such as agent performance, ticket volume, or issue complexity.
The goal of this metric is to understand the efficiency and ability of your support team to handle the average number of support requests received by your business. The most ideal ticket backlog rate is as close to zero as possible.
Ticket backlog calculation:
Ticket volume
The ticket volume metric measures the total number of tickets received during a specified time frame. Calculating ticket volume gives you an overview of your customer support workload and allows you to track patterns and trends over time.
The ideal ticket volume rate varies widely depending on factors such as industry, time of year, and communication channel. However, regularly tracking ticket volume allows you to see unexpected spikes in incoming support tickets, likely indicating an issue with a specific product or service.
Ticket volume calculation:
To calculate the total ticket volume, simply count the number of tickets received over a specific period of time.
Number of tickets per channel
The number of tickets per channel KPI measures the number of tickets received by each individual support channel (customer service SMS, email, phone call, etc.).
The goal of this metric is to provide your support leaders with an in-depth understanding of your business’ most-used support channels in order to properly allocate resources and staffing.
Tickets per channel calculation:
To calculate the number of tickets per channel, all you need to do is count the number of tickets received in each channel over a specific amount of time.
Abandonment rate
This metric, though most commonly tracked for phone calls, can be used across support channels to measure the amount of contacts who hang up or disconnect before issue resolution.
A high abandonment rate likely signals larger issues within your customer service team, such as understaffing, customer dissatisfaction, or lack of effective training. Ideally, your abandonment rate will be below 8 percent. Rates above 10 percent may indicate an underlying issue.
Abandonment rate calculation:
Occupancy
The occupancy rate KPI tracks the amount of time your customer service reps spend actively handling and resolving customer issues. The occupancy KPI is important because it helps leadership track productivity and ensure agent time is optimized, while also helping to identify and prevent agent burnout.
This metric measures both time the agent spends actively communicating with the customer and handling ticket backlogs. To avoid overburdened agents and also maximize productivity, most customer service teams should aim for an occupancy rate of between 80 and 90 percent.
Occupancy rate calculation:
Agent productivity
The agent productivity KPI differs from the occupancy rate metric in that it measures not only the amount of time an agent spends working on customer tickets, but also key factors such as:
- Response speed
- Average time to first contact
- Percentage of escalations
- Number of resolved tickets
- First-touch resolutions
The combination of these metrics, when applied to individual representatives, can give leadership an idea of the performance and productivity of specific agents. These metrics can be measured against the amount of time worked to determine a positive or negative productivity rate.
Agent turnover rate
This KPI tracks the rate at which agents voluntarily leave positions each year. While not a guaranteed indicator of product or customer issues, agent turnover rate is a financial and organizational drain on a business.
A high turnover rate likely indicates issues within the overall company culture and results in loss of product knowledge, business growth, and difficulty meeting goals.
Agent turnover rate calculation:
After choosing a specific period of time to measure, use the following calculation:
Customer complaint type
The customer complaint type (CCT) metric measures the rate and type of complaints received by the support team. This metric is key to tracking the success of a specific product or service provided by your business.
The goal of this metric is to understand areas of support that are sources of friction or frustration to customers.
Customer complaint type rate calculation:
Upsell or cross-sell success rate
The upsell, or cross-sell, success rate KPI measures the percentage of customers who accept upgrades or upsells presented to them by your representatives.
The goal of this metric is to measure the effectiveness of your team’s upselling abilities and strategies. It’s an important KPI because, when performed well, a team that can upsell well will increase its average order value and increase overall revenue.
The higher the upsell success rate, the better. Upsells or cross-sells should include things like add-ons, higher priced or tiered items, and upgrades.
Upsell success rate calculation:
Self-service usage rate
This KPI tracks your customers' usage of available self-service tools such as knowledge bases, chatbots, web forums, and FAQs. The goal of the self-service usage rate metric is to understand how effective your business’ self-support tools are at issue resolution.
A higher self-service usage rate indicates a well-rounded collection of solution tools and less strain on customer service representatives.
Self-service usage rate calculation:
Frequently asked questions about customer service KPIs
Let’s dive into a few FAQs regarding customer service KPIs.
What KPI is the gold standard for customer service?
There’s not one single North Star KPI that all customer service teams absolutely must track. The best KPIs for any given support team depend on factors such as industry, goals, and business size. There are metrics that can be universally beneficial, such as the CSAT and NPS KPIs, but there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach for all businesses.
We tapped Textline’s head of customer experience for her opinion on this question. Ms. Lou shared her belief that “prioritizing efficiency metrics, like first response time and resolution time” are key to ensuring your customers are heard, issues are resolved quickly, and the overall customer experience is positive.
Here are two key points to consider when choosing your first KPIs to track:
- Choose balanced KPIs. Agent behavior will be affected by the metrics your leadership team is tracking. Exclusively tracking agent response times may improve reply metrics, but quality might begin to suffer. Alternatively, only tracking customer satisfaction scores might lead to agents spending too much time on each ticket. Select metrics that complement and balance the customer and agent experience.
- Align KPIs with goals. If your goal is to reduce churn or agent turnover, set KPIs that focus on those two issues. If your business wants to be known for amazing customer service, set KPIs that revolve around customer satisfaction.
Should KPIs vary by customer service channel?
For the most part, yes, KPIs should be tracked independently in each communication channel. Certain metrics, like customer satisfaction scores, can be applicable regardless of channel and can be tracked as an overall score. But for KPIs that rely on metrics such as reply times, issue resolution times, or contact frequency, you likely won’t see the same rates across multiple channels.
Textline’s Ms. Lou put it this way, “At Textline, we try to keep our support chat reply times under two minutes. For support channels such as email, we have longer reply time goals.” The KPIs you track and how you measure success should be defined independently per channel in order to accurately assess performance.
What are some best practices for setting KPIs?
To track, evaluate, analyze, and set goals for KPIs, teams need to be methodical and intentional in the implementation and selection of tracking metrics. The following are a few best practices for setting KPIs:
- Align KPIs with business goals
- Track and measure success
- Establish clear timeframes
- Make sure goals are achievable
- Invest in agent training
- Regularly ask for customer feedback
- Frequently request feedback from agents
Seamlessly track customer service metrics with Textline
Textline is a leading communications provider for customer support teams. With features built specifically for support teams, Textline streamlines issue resolution, collaborative work, and internal communications while providing teams with in-depth insights into their SMS support metrics.
Textline actively tracks and analyzes metrics for teams and individual users, presents insights into trends and patterns, and offers specific organizational and tagging features for support issues, making it easy to set and measure customer service KPIs.
Let Textline do the work for you. Start tracking your customer service success with a 14-day free trial.
