Your business’s customer service bottom-line impact depends largely on the effective of customer service management taking place in your organization.
Consistently delivering positive, impactful performance requires you to frequently audit or account for the daily customer service management actions taking place.
Those customer service managers and customer experience specialists who consistently deliver the type of impact that affects the bottom line have learned to closely monitor management performance in four specific areas that contribute to the bottom-line of the business.
The key customer service management metric you need must measure
As you take an account of your customer service management activities, ensuring that these four specific areas of service management are thriving and delivering effective results will ensure that your service organization is contributing to the bottom-line of your organization.
Perform a management audit of yourself and the people who report directly to you. The criteria should include whether you/they made good people decisions, whether you/they have had any innovative ideas, and whether your/their strategic expectations came to pass. Managing in Turbulent Times
-Peter Drucker, Managing in Turbulent Times
Customer service management performance depends on creating results from your resources
As a customer service manager, or a manager over customer support or customer experience, you are most likely to report to an executive in operations, marketing, or some other department within a company. If you are lucky enough to be in a truly customer-centric or customer-focused organization you may even report directly to a CEO or COO. Regardless of who you report to, the first thing an executive will expect from you is an accounting of the resources entrusted within your organization. We’re not talking people here, we’re talking strict systems, tools, and materials placed at your disposal. It comes down
Measure what your executives want to know
One of the most common areas where customer service managers overlook accounting is in their resources. Too often systems, computers, and materials used in the world of customer service and customer support are overlooked and just viewed as given requirements for the job. Yes, they may be required, but you’re still held accountable. You are responsible for what gets done with what you have. Want to get new computers or switch to a new system for your staff? You’ll have to give an accounting of what you’re doing with what you have now and what you can do with what you want. It has to make sense from a numbers stand point. That’s what every executive will demand of you. Show them that it makes sense with numbers.
Accountability is the key to unlocking future customer service resources
This isn’t a bad thing. Being held accountable is a fantastic opportunity for you. If your organization sees exactly how much you can get done with what you have now and you can back up your expected returns from new additions or replacements, you’re bound to get what you’re asking for. It just needs to make numbers sense. Measure output in terms of actions performed. Keep track of these results and track them over time. You should be able to see a pattern in your team’s productivity. You can then test the new resource or a small version of the new system and ensure that it will deliver the results you expect. Report those early results to give proof that your plan will deliver the expected impact.
Getting customer service support from executive management
Far too many professionals cry out that there just isn’t enough support from management to create the type of service environment they believe will deliver the type of positive customer experience impact they know will help the organization. Executive management isn’t entirely to blame for the lack of customer service support that many service experts wish they had. Executives make strategic decisions based on operational information and reporting. If customer service managers can’t make the case for greater resources, new systems, or can’t demonstrate how adding customer service staff will contribute to the bottom-line, then you can’t completely blame executives for withholding additional resources.
Review your service management decisions and those made my the people who work for you. You should be able to account if the decisions made created the positive impact expected. You should be able to report on the return to the organization from the resources allocated to your group. Most importantly, you should be able to demonstrate how your team delivered on the strategic needs and expectations of your organization.
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