Each month, I highlight one Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for service and support. I define the KPI, provide recent benchmarking data for the metric, and discuss key correlations and cause-and-effect relationships for the metric. The purpose of the column is to familiarize you with the KPIs that really matter to your organization and to provide you with actionable insight on how to leverage these KPIs to improve your performance! This month, I tackle customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is by far the most common measure of quality. It is widely used, not just in IT service and support, but in all industries. It is so ubiquitous that most of us have probably been surveyed within the last week, by our bank, an airline, our insurance company, a hotel, or some other service provider. The metric is so common, that most have an intuitive feel for customer satisfaction. We know, for example, that a customer satisfaction rating of 70% is probably not very good, while a customer satisfaction score of greater than 90% is very good indeed! Customer satisfaction is the percentage of customers who are either satisfied or very satisfied with the quality of support they receive. It is equally applicable to the service desk and desktop support and is the single most important measure of quality for a support organization. In this article, I will use service desk examples and benchmarking data, but the principles discussed apply equally to desktop support. Why It’s Important As we learned in April’s Metric of the Month, cost per ticket and customer satisfaction, are the foundation metrics in service and support. They are the two most important metrics because ultimately everything boils down to cost efficiency (as measured by cost per ticket) and quality of service (as measured by customer satisfaction). In any service delivery organization, quality of service, as measured by customer satisfaction, is critically important. Customer satisfaction is a measure of how effectively a support organization conducts its business. Every service and support organization should be tracking customer satisfaction on an ongoing basis. How It’s Measured There are almost as many different ways to measure customer satisfaction as there are service organizations that track the metric. I have seen surveys that contain as few as one question and surveys that contain as many as 40 questions. I have seen multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and interview-style surveys. I have seen scoring systems that offer as few as 2 choices per question, and as many as 12 choices per question. The result is that customer satisfaction has the greatest variability of any metric in service and support. To continue reading, you must become a member. Membership is free and sign-up only takes a moment. Click the sign-up button below, complete the short form and checkout. No credit card is required and your membership never expires! Sign Up Already a member? Login
