The help desk is often the first touchpoint that a customer has with your business. That makes it the perfect place to track KPIs that measure and improve customer satisfaction. But here’s why the CSAT just isn’t enough on its own, and other help desk metrics to track.
Key takeaways
- What is the CSAT?
- Why the CSAT isn’t enough on its own
- Top help desk KPIs:
- Ticket organization
- Ticket response and resolution
- Ticket escalations
- Conversion rate
- Ticket conversion rate
- Click-through rate
- Engaging help desk employees
Measuring customer satisfaction is one of the first steps in improving the customer service department or help desk. The customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is one helpful metric that gives you a glimpse into how your brand is being received. However, contrary to what many businesses believe, the CSAT on its own just isn’t enough to improve the delivery of help desk services.
Let’s walk through what the CSAT is and how it’s measured, why it’s not enough on its own, and other top help desk metrics to track and improve customer satisfaction.
What is the CSAT?
The CSAT is a score meant to tell you how customers are perceiving you and how satisfied they are with a product, service, or interaction they had with your company. The higher your CSAT, the greater the customer satisfaction. So, for example, a CSAT of 100% would be ideal.
It’s fairly simple to measure the CSAT, and is usually accomplished by asking customers one question: “How satisfied were you with [company/product/service]?”
Or you can use some variation of this question. The Net Promoter Score is a similar feedback option that asks: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our business to a friend or colleague?”
Because these feedback mechanisms are easy for the customer to complete, they’re more likely to answer them than a lengthy survey. And these scores, which average customer responses, can tell you a lot about the effectiveness of your customer support and care.
Why the CSAT isn’t enough on its own
While CSAT is important, it’s not enough on its own to measure the success of your help desk. CSAT doesn’t tell you why that number is what it is. It doesn’t tell you, for example, where a problem starts or what factors cause a spike or dip in the number.
You need to add additional KPIs from your help desk to nail down these answers. Then, you can address issues at their source in ways that directly improve CSAT.
Top 6 help desk metrics
Where should you start with your help desk metrics? Let’s walk through a few of the top KPIs you can use to track and analyze to stay focused on boosting customer satisfaction.
- Ticket completeness
First, take a look at how your ticket management system is organized. Are all tickets being completed? On each ticket, are all fields being filled in? Where do gaps exist and what are the consequences of those oversights?
- Ticket response and resolution
Another crucial factor for customer satisfaction is tracking how long it takes for the team to respond to a ticket after it’s been submitted and how long until the issue is resolved. The lower the wait times on responses and resolution, the better it is for customer satisfaction.
- Ticket escalations
A ticket escalation occurs when the original responder is unable to resolve the ticket without help from another team member or manager, so they assign it to someone else. Because escalations cause delays in getting the issue resolved, it’s better to avoid a lot of escalated tickets. Tracking this metric can help you identify opportunities for training and areas of weakness on the team.
- Conversion rate
The customer conversion rate tells you how many customers are actually taking a desired action, like making a purchase or downloading a product guide. The help desk is sometimes the first touchpoint a potential customer has with the company, leading them to convert or not, so it’s a relevant metric to keep an eye on.
- Ticket conversion rate
The ticket conversion rate will give you visibility into how many customers are actually taking the time to submit a ticket, whether those tickets are getting resolved, and how long the process takes.
- Click-through rate
In general, a click-through rate tells you how many people clicked on a link to visit your website or landing page. In regard to customer satisfaction and the help desk, this is a crucial metric. Click-through rate will show how many customers actually clicked the survey link and completed it.
These six help desk metrics will help you dig deeper into customer satisfaction and uncover what’s behind your CSAT. Remember to set goals for each KPI and be prepared to pivot your approach when something changes drastically.
Engaging help desk employees
Another way to ensure that customer satisfaction remains high is to focus on engaging your help desk employees. And an effective way to focus on engagement is to start a rewards and recognition program, where workers are rewarded for their efforts and thus stay motivated and focused at work.
Crewhu’s platform helps you create an employee engagement and recognition program for your help desk that, in turn, will boost customer satisfaction. When employees are happier and work harder to reach goals, they’ll be friendlier and more helpful to customers.
Contact Crewhu to learn more about our platform, or learn how to boost customer satisfaction by downloading our guide to the 7 Elements of a Successful CSAT Program.
Topics: boost customer satisfaction, track these help desk metrics
