What Gets Measured Gets Done - Leading Customer Service

How often have we heard the phrase, 'what gets measured gets done'?  If you want to lose weight, you count calories and weigh yourself regularly.  If you want to increase sales of a particular product, place a focus on that.  If you want to reduce costs, measure what is spent.  Well, the same is true with excellent customer service. 

If you want to improve your clients' experience, you will need to put measurements in place that will measure the impact of your service efforts.  A few ideas to keep in mind when putting your customer service measurements in place:

Put in a combination of long-term and short-term measurements.  You should have measures that evaluate the effectiveness of your customer-service programs over time, but make sure there are on-going measurements, as well, that track service issues and allow you to intervene before small problems escalate into large ones. 

Keep measurements simple, so you don't have to spend inordinate amount of time explaining the calculation and inordinate resources calculating the effectiveness of your customer-service program.

Inspect the numbers carefully of the customer service provider whose numbers seem too good.  For what I have found is that once employees understand what it is they are being held accountable, they will do whatever is necessary to achieve those results.   For example, if you tell your employees you compensate for cross-selling, they may hurry through or even disconnect (yes, I've seen this happen) callers who they determine have no cross-selling potential. 

What gets measured definitely does get done.  Just make sure you have the right measurements in place, so you achieve the results you want.