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Metrics for Social Customer Service:

How to Go from Monitoring Metrics to Implementing a Strategic


Measurements Model and from Average Handle Time to Sentiments
Brought to you by

Sponsored by

2010, Social Media Today, LLC

Metrics for Social Customer Service:


How to Go from Monitoring Metrics to Implementing a Strategic
Measurements Model and from Average Handle Time to Sentiments
3

Part 1: Introduction
Esteban Kolsky | Principal and Founder, ThinkJar

Part 2: Four Steps to B2B Social Media Marketing Excellence with SAP Community Network
Gail Moody-Byrd | Senior Director, Global Ecosystem and Partner Marketing, Communities, SAP AG

Commentary by Esteban Kolsky

Part 3: Customer Service in the Age of Social Media


Mitchell Lieberman | President and CEO, Comity Technical Advisors

11

Commentary by Esteban Kolsky

12

Part 4: The Importance of Measuring the New Customer Service Experience


Becky Carroll | Founder and President, Petra Consulting Group

15

Commentary by Esteban Kolsky

16

Part 5: Is Your Customer Service World-Class?


Frank Eliason | Senior Vice President, Social Media, Citibank

18

Commentary by Esteban Kolsky

19

Part 6: How to Create a Management Strategy


Esteban Kolsky | Principal and Founder, ThinkJar

22

Further Reading

Part:

Introduction
Esteban Kolsky | Principal and Founder, ThinkJar
Many business functions have evolved since companies
began embracing social media five or six years ago, but
one that has lagged behind is customer service.
This is intriguing, because most of the deployments
of what is called Social CRM (Customer Relationship
Management) or Social Business are aimed at
customer service.
How is this possible?
Whenever a transformation in society, technology, or
business models has called for a similar transformation in
customer service, customer service has changed
(see figure 1).

plan points

Functional Customer Service Evolution


Service
requests
emerge

Customer
uses
phone

New
channels
emerge

Strategic
channel
usage

technology solution

Service
requests
emerge

Call
owner

Contact
owner

UC

1980

1990

Figure 1

2010

Through experience, we learned that the successful


changes involved altering the measurement strategy as
well as the metrics and methods used in that strategy.
Altering the overall measurement strategy helps justify
the change, builds a business case, focuses a return on
investment, and generally highlights what matters and
drives that forward.
Now the momentum of social media is putting pressure on
customer service to evolve into social customer service.
That will mean reassessing the metrics used today and the
methods used to collect, analyze, and report them, and
ultimately creating a new measurement strategy.
This e-book includes articles from practitioners of
customer service who have been working on the front
lines of the transition to social customer service. Taken
together, they are a guide to help you understand the
changes necessary and how to implement them in your
organization.
If you are strictly looking for a collection of metrics to
implement, you wont find them here. As you will learn
from the thought leaders in this e-book, there is no one
set of metrics for you to adoptyour organization will
have to determine which data points make sense in its
social strategy and find a way to collect and use them.
We will tell you where to look and how to employ them,
but the rest is up to you.
Lets begin.
Continued on next page

334

Part:

Introduction (contd)
The Need to Change Measurement Strategies
You may be wondering, do we really need to change
measurement strategies and do it all over again, or can
we simply add a few more metrics (social metrics) to
what we are already doing? It is quite simplekeeping
the same measurement strategy as before indicates that
nothing has changed in the business, and that the new
channel is merely being added as a one-way channel:
customers can either ask questions (and hopefully get
answers), or the organization can put out information
(that hopefully customers will seek and read). By not
altering the measurement strategy, an organization
indicates it doesnt care about what happens, but is
solely reacting to external pressures rather than
developing an internal strategy driven by well-defined
objectives and the use of social channels as a means
to achieve those objectives.
So, yesyou do need to change your strategy, with all
that this implies. Lets start with a case study to highlight
one organizations change in strategy. This is a great
example from Gail Moody-Byrd of SAP on how to change a
measurement strategy to take advantage of social media.

344

Part:

Four Steps to B2B Social Media Marketing


Excellence with SAP Community Network
Gail Moody-Byrd | Senior Director, Global Ecosystem and Partner Marketing,
Communities, SAP AG
Weve been on a journey over the past 12 months to
effectively integrate popular social networking platforms
into SAP Community Networks (SCN) communication and
marketing activitiesexpanding the options for the core
team to deliver value to our members. This brief case
study will outline the SAP Community marketing teams
approach and the results so far.
SAP Community Network is already a vibrant, highly
effective community of over two million customers,
partners, and SAP experts in more than 200 countries. It
draws one million unique visitors a monthand over two
million total visits each monthwith 99,000 members
contributing in 2009 alone. SCN has been consistently
recognized as a leader in the space. According to Charlene
Li, of Altimeter, in August 2009, SAP ranks in the top ten
of the worlds most valuable brands based on how they
leverage social media to interact with customers.
What could popular social networking channels possibly
add to this already exemplary community?
Four Steps to a Best Practice
for Social Media Marketing
1. Audit Current Social Activities
We started with an audit researching which social
network properties were being used by members of SCN
and SAP-interested people overall, and how they were

being used. Through our audit we found more than 50


SAP-related social sites spread across Facebook, LinkedIn,
and Twitter (which we grouped into amplification
properties); and YouTube, Flickr, and Slideshare (which we
classified as syndication properties).
Emerging from the audit, the SCN marketing team saw
the need to construct a unique social architecture of
properties connected to SCN, uniformly branded, with a
clear vision of the role of each property in increasing the
reach (by finding new SAP enthusiasts and those unaware
of SCN) and immediacy of SCN.
2. Orchestrate by Building a Social Architecture
Next step for us was to optimize our newly minted official
SCN social properties, define best practices, and train
our team how to orchestrate the channels to best effect.
For Facebook and Twitter, a strategy was implemented
to amplify content from SCN and SAP at large, engaging
fans/followers. It was designed to draw members into a
deeper dialogue on the social channels, and ultimately
on SCN itself. With YouTube, we transformed our model
for customer success stories and testimonialswe use
it to provide member-generated testimonials, captured
informally on video cameras, providing a level of
authenticity that is more effective than any best-in-class
marketing brochure.
Continued on next page

354

Part:

Four Steps to Excellence (contd)


With our property strategy sorted out, we created SAP
Community Network Social Media Guidelines, which
documented the flow of content from SAP Community
Network out to our off-domain social properties and back.
We applied consistent SAP Community branding on all our
social media extensions to create a common touchstone
for users across platforms and to distinguish ourselves
from the other SAP-related accounts.
3. Test Tools and Optimize Content
We are undergoing an extensive process of testing tools
intended to allow us to plan, structure, and deploy
content and conversations across our social channels,
clustering topics into campaigns to measure levels of
engagement for the topics on each platform.
There is a rapid proliferation of social media listening,
amplification, and measurement tools on the market.
Based on that, we found testing was critical to find tools
that met our unique needs as a well-established, ongoing
community for which social media was only an extension
of conversations that were already firmly established.
We found, for example, through a 90-day test with a
vendor, that listening tools did not add any value at this
stage in our development, because the yield of net new
conversations from broad-based Web listening tools was
very low for us. Our home site, SCN, was indeed the source
of most quality content about the topics our audience

was most engaged by, and most influential SAP experts


were already contributing on our parent site. After this
phase of testing, our charter became even more focused
on identifying customers and partners in our ecosystem
who were unaware of SCN and could benefit from the rich
collaboration there.
4. Define meaningful metrics and report
monthly results
With our clearly defined objective to create vibrant,
orchestrated platforms that reinforce and extend
community reach and build reputation for SCN, we
knew it was going to be crucial to set goals, map
progress, and iterate along the way.
For our executive dashboard, we capture and analyze
results monthly for these key metrics:
Social users (total count)
Interactions
Impression
Conversion rate
Interaction rate
These are analyzed more intently than the common
measures of fans and followers, etc., because we must
manage the quality of our engagement in addition to
the quantity. Our discerning members are accustomed to
engaging in a high-level discourse that delivers tangible
value. Pure marketing messages are discouraged and even
chided by members, many of whom are experts in their
Continued on next page

364

Part:

Four Steps to Excellence (contd)


field and have high expectations. We measure 34 different
aspects of our performance, outsourcing this complex task
to a firm that specializes in the rapidly evolving world of
social media tools and metrics.
We communicate our results internally not only to our
core SCN team, but also to an internal list of social
media enthusiasts and practitioners in other parts of SAP.
Sharing knowledge with our colleagues reduces the overall
social media learning curve within our company.
Results
We like to think that our form of community social media
really unbundles the brochure, providing a new level
of engagement that changes the role of marketer from
creator to conductor.

Another measure of success is our traction in leveraging


these social media channels for generating demand for
SAP products. For example, we host webcasts on topics
where a sub-community is established (e.g., CRM or
retail) and orchestrate conversations on SCN, Twitter, and
Facebook to drive interest and attendance. Interested
webcast attendees are identified and passed to sales
for follow-up. Notably, attendees can continue the rich
conversation started during the webcast in our alwayson community and our social networking channels.
One three-part webinar series generated thousands
of registrations, attendees, and leads (it was recordbreaking!).

Participation on all SCN social properties increased


140% between June and July 2010. Our customized
Facebook page has exploded, growing by 400 percent
in eight months. Weve also seen consistent 25 percent
month-over-month growth in Twitter followers for
@sapcomment. Our traffic from social media channels
back to SCN has increased by 41 percent.

374

Part:

Commentary by Esteban Kolsky


You might be thinking, hold on, I thought this was about changing customer service
not marketing. Why is the case study about changing a marketing program?
Excellent question.
Social media is just now beginning to take over the enterprise, and customer service is
not the first place where you will see the changes (actually, as you might have guessed,
marketing is). Still, while there are plenty of articles and case studies that point to how
social media is transforming customer service, none describes a focus on a change in the
measurement strategy or a metrics shift.
In fact, all the case studies of social customer service I have seen discuss changes to
existing metrics: number of interactions, time to solve, number of deflected calls (the most
popular one), number of people following/in the community, etc.no mention of any
changes to the measurement strategy.
As we stated, the customer service model is changing, and the metrics and strategy used
must change with it. In the following article, Mitch Lieberman from Comity Advisors talks
about what is happening to customer service with the advent of social media.

384

Part:

Customer Service in the Age of Social Media


Mitchell Lieberman | President and CEO, Comity Technical Advisors
Customers expectations are either met or not, depending
on the perception by your customers of the product they
purchased or the service that was delivered. This reality
is the same for a large enterprise or a mom and pop
business around the corner. If a company truly wants to
become a customer-centric organization, it will welcome
feedback from its customers any way it can get it. In this
age of the Social Web, an obvious business preference
would be for your company to be able to act and respond
to any feedback prior to a public pronouncement by your
customers. The fundamental question is what does this do
to your operational metrics, ability to do business on a
daily basis, and scale of your organization? The challenge
is how to adapt to the following three major changes
caused by the Social Web:
Customer expectations regarding customer service have
changed, with most customers expecting service when,
where, and how they want it.
Your ability, as a business, to understand and truly hear
what your customers are saying is impaired by your
lack of ability to truly listen and measure the relative
importance of each piece of feedback.
Your customers are choosing to communicate with
you (and to you) using a variety of channels. New
channels require training and do not fit into standard
measurement buckets like average handle time (AHT)
and First Call Close.

Enhancing the customer experience may both go against


your standard operational metrics and be a challenge
to the whole organization. Market research is often
focused on understanding your customers en masse; it is
not focused on improving the customers experience or
improving operational performance. Unfortunately, the
converse is also true; focusing on operational performance
does not typically include understanding your customers
or enhancing their experiences. Putting the two together
makes a powerful combination that will lead to an
enhanced customer experience.
In order to meet and even exceed customer expectations,
you need the ability, and capability, to listen, hear, and
engage with your customers both quickly and with an
eye toward creating longer, durable relationships. I enjoy
downhill skiing, but because I live in the Northeast, I
have an additional set of challenges, namely ice, rocks,
and tree stumps. Where the basic idea is to point the skis
downward, at the top of the hill, if I am unable to adapt
to the conditions, which change with each run, even
every 25 yards, I am not going to have a very enjoyable
run. It is easy to say and hard to do, but reorienting the
focus of metrics from cost and cost savings toward value
and customer retention must be considered.
Continued on next page

394

Part:

Customer Service (contd)


Structured versus Unstructured
While we would all like to believe that all the information
floating around the Social Web is both meaningful and
structured for our use, this is not the case. Most of the
information involves people sharing their experiences
with peers or generally venting about a recent experience.
If you begin to bring this data into your call center, you
will need to alter your metrics. When people share these
experiences, they are typically hoping for a response, from
either the company (give me something) or their peers
(hey, thanks for the tip). The real questions are what
can you, as a company, do with the data and how does it
affect your team?
By becoming part of the community, you will be able
to gain deeper insights into what your customers really
think. From a customer service perspective, by becoming
part of the community you will be able to distinguish
whiners and soapbox talkers from customers with real
and urgent issues. Urgency is a funny word, as it depends
specifically on its use as to whether it is perceived as
good or bad. Let me state up front that with respect to
customer service, urgency is a good thing, but give me
a moment to make the case and clear the air. During the
customer acquisition phase (aka sales), urgency expressed
by the salesperson is considered a possible weakness,
concern about the sale, or need for the sale. Salespeople
are always trying to strike the balance of urgency versus
responsiveness. With respect to customer service, every

customer wants you to show a sense of urgency every


time he or she calls, writes, or contacts you. Once he
or she is a customer, showing a sense of urgency is a
very good thing. In the age of the Social Web, what
information do you have available so that you can
both be responsive to the customer as well as show the
appropriate sense of urgency?
With customers using any means necessary to get your
attention, your processes are more important than ever.
Now, we do not mean processes that will provide your
customers with a very specific pathway to problem
resolution; rather, that you have processes in place to
hear your customers, and be responsive to their needs
quickly and methodically. You need the ability to measure
sentiment and tone, going beyond categorizing people
in simple buckets. All of these new customer service
requirements are going to alter the standard call-center
measurements and will affect smaller businesses more
than large enterprises.

3104

Part:

Commentary by Esteban Kolsky


Now we are back on track finally talking about customer service and how it is changing.
Mitch made some very good points and laid out a clear case for what you have to do as an
organization to shift into that model. It is not only to recognize that the customer is using
social channels and is in control of the conversation, but it is also about understanding
that your processes and the way you work will change in accordance with this shift.

Evolution of Customer Metrics


CRM
Demographic Operational

Who the
customers
are

How
efficiently
the
business
operates

Behavioral

What the
customers
do and how
they work

Attitudinal

How
effectively
the
business
operates

Figure 2

Social CRM

Sentimental

How the
customers
feel
about the
business,
products,
services as
expressed
publicly

Mitch is focused on the evolution of


customer service while also pushing
the evolution of metrics. Figure 2
shows the evolution of customer
metrics and where we are in this
process. As you can see, we are
beginning to explore the next level in
metrics tracked: the sentimental level.
Further confirming the statement made
at the beginning, the measurement
strategy must change because what is
measured is now differentnot just
new metrics.

Whereas until now organizations focused on metrics that derived from internal data, for the
most part, or were calculated from external data collected for the purpose of measurement,
this new evolution changes where the data resides, what it means, and how the business
must use it.
In this next article, Becky Carroll of Petra Consulting explores in more detail what moving
from measuring effectiveness to measuring sentiments means for customer service.

3114

Part:

The Importance of Measuring


the New Customer Service Experience
Becky Carroll | Founder and President, Petra Consulting Group
Customer service has always been an important part of
an organization, but it has not always been prioritized
the way it should. Social media is bringing the need
for outstanding customer service back to the forefront.
Customers, both business customers as well as consumers,
have iPhones, BlackBerries, iPads, and other mobile
devices right at their fingertipsand through the use of
those devices, they are regularly interacting with their
social networks.
When something goes wrong, from the customers
perspective, they not only get frustrated but are
immediately sharing their frustrations via Twitter,
Facebook, and other sites. I have been waiting on the
phone for 15 minutes; come on, Company XYZ, arent you
there? I attended a concert at ABC Amphitheater last
night, and the sound was terrible. Im never going back
there.
The Shift
What does this mean for companies?
The public practice of customer service has become a
business imperative. Customer service successes, as well
as failures, are easily visible to customers and competitors
alike. As a result, the metrics being used today to
measure the results of customer service interactions are
not entirely adequate to capture this new world. Some
rethinking is required. We dont want to get rid of the

existing metrics, but businesses need to integrate ways


of measuring new interactions in order to understand the
success (or failure) of their customer service processes.
In order to understand this shift, we need to keep in mind
customer expectations of a service experience. Customers
are looking for the following:
B
 e Fast get back to me/respond quickly
B
 e Accurate get me the right answer/solve my
problem
B
 e Friendly I am already feeling inconvenienced
dont make it worse!
Traditional Metrics, with a Twist
The more traditional customer service metrics of time
to respond, first contact resolution, time to resolve,
customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, etc., are still
important to measure and track in this new world. (Note:
if your organization is still focused on efficiency metrics
only, rather than tracking some of the aforementioned
metrics, it is time to make a different shift to help
measure the customer experience.) However, some of
the traditional metrics will be greatly affected by social
media.
Time to Respond
When the social media channel used by the customer
is a real-time social media tool, such as Twitter or
Facebook, the speed of response becomes a very critical
measure. Many customers are using social media tools
Continued on next page

3124

Part:

Measuring the New Customer Service Experience (contd)


as an escalation path, so expectations are high. What
is acceptable in terms of time to respond via e-mail, for
example, will not suffice for social media. So, while the
metric remains the same (response time), the service
levels are different. In social media, as soon as a
customer escalation is seen, the company will most likely
need to jump on it quickly and get it resolved ASAP.
First Contact Resolution and Time to Resolve
These are still important metrics for customer service
interactions via social media. First Contact Resolution
is a metric that may, again, need to be slightly revised.
For example, a customer may complain about an issue
via Twitter. However, Twitter only allows 140 characters
in a Tweet, so if the issue is at all complex, the small
number of characters probably isnt sufficient to describe
it. Many times, customer service issues cannot be resolved
via social media channels, and they need to be followed
up via phone or e-mail. In other words, the social media
tool is often just the gateway to the service interaction;
once we are back into traditional support channels of
e-mail or phone, a companys regular customer service
metrics will apply.
Keep in mind, however, that issues raised via social media
may need to be resolved faster than normally allowed
the world will be watching.

Other Metrics for Social Media Customer Service


Customers will be talking about your customer service
response via social media or lack thereof. It will be
important to monitor some other metrics in order to
understand and track the customer service conversations.
These include the following:
Sentiment
The emotions of customers are a bit tricky to understand
via an electronic medium, yet they are a key factor in
understanding customer satisfaction levels in social
media. What is the sentiment of Tweets, Facebook
postings, and blog postings, as well as community
forum threads about your products or services? Positive?
Negative? Trending one way or the other? How do a
companys current customers feel versus its prospects?
Number of issues coming in versus number resolved
Many customer issues that come in via social media tools
such as Twitter, Facebook, blog, or community forums
will be able to be resolved to the customers satisfaction.
However, there will also be a number of issues that will
not be resolved. Why? Through my experience, I have
found that sometimes customers just want to be heard.
They dont want you to do anything about it; they just
want others to hear their concern. In these cases, the
company should let the customer know it is available
to help if desired. It will be helpful to track these types
of issues along with the number resolved, so that the
amount of complaining for the sake of complaining
can be watched over time.
Continued on next page

3134

Part:

Measuring the New Customer Service Experience (contd)


Frequency
Another area to track is how frequently customer service
issues come in via social media. This can be an indicator
either of a widespread problem, of a shift in customer
interaction preference, or of a breakdown in other
company service channels. Understanding volumes and
frequencies will also assist in staffing to handle social
media customer service (dont forget the weekends!).
Friendliness
This one is a more qualitative measure, similar to
sentiment. How is the company coming across in its
customer service responses via social media? Expectations
are that social media CSRs will be more genuine, less
formal, and easier to talk with than contact center reps.
Call Deflections
This metric should be tracked for social media channels
such as online peer-to-peer support communities, along
with other self-service paths. However, since social media
are often used as an escalation path, this metric may be
skewed as customers may have already tried to call!
Finally, customer satisfaction and loyalty should continue
to be measured across the customer experience, including
in social media channels. In fact, the satisfaction levels
of your social media customers may be even more critical
in that many have a large sphere of online influence, and
all of these interactions are very public.

3144

Part:

Commentary by Esteban Kolsky


You can probably see a pattern emerging in these articles: customer demands must be met,
and they must be met quickly. What may have been an option before, listening to and
responding to the customer quickly, became a necessity as the social evolution began to
take hold. Customers found their voices, and how to use them, and they are now in control
of the conversation.
Here is another interesting case study: Comcast. Frank Eliason drove the change from
service to social customer service at Comcast and had a front-row seat to witness what
was necessary to make it happen. In this next article he talks about the many nuances
relating to people, leaders, and culturethat make the change successful and how to
measure the performance and success of the solution.

3154

Part:

Is Your Customer Service World-Class?


Frank Eliason | Senior Vice President, Social Media, Citibank
To me, social media is a part of a customer service
strategy, but there are many components to becoming
world-class. It is now my goal to not only change the
views of companies regarding social media, but in the
process to change the level of customer service all
companies provide. If you are looking to create a worldclass customer service organization, here are some
thoughts to help you along the way.

course, this strategy tends to backfire, as it creates a false


sense of security for the leaders, and they do not know
the impact their decisions have on the customer. While I
was at that company, change came fast and furious once
we started to share the reality. If you ever hear me talk
about sharing the customer story, my strong opinion does
not come from social media, but rather from what we
accomplished at this prior company.

The first key step is to determine how close the leadership


team is to the customer. There are many ways to
accomplish this. You could establish a C-level position
of Chief Customer Officer, something I strongly advocate,
but there is much more. How effective is your leadership
team at listening to the customer and employees of all
levels? This is an area many companies pride themselves
on, but I noticed for a long time that much of what they
hear is smoke and mirrors. A few years back I worked
at a credit card bank, and the CEO was getting much
more involved in the overall customer experience. He
would have weekly meetings with many leaders of the
organization, and one of the goals was to listen to calls.
My boss at the time would have us listen to hundreds
of calls, looking for the perfect call to share, with the
point being to send the message that all was well. I have
seen it numerous times, not just with calls, but in many
times data, too. People like to share the good work they
are doing, especially when they have the opportunity to
connect with the most senior leaders of the company. Of

Social media is helping to flatten the organization,


and that is very helpful for keeping leaders connected,
but has your company embraced internal uses of social
media? One of the keys to being a world-class customer
service organization is providing those employees who
are connected directly with the customer the access
to share what they are hearing with the right decision
makers. Some companies have referred to this as a voice
of the customer process, but ultimately it empowers
employees to share what is working, what is not, and the
needs of their customers. The key factor is not just that
this information is shared, but the actions taken by the
leadership team as a result. That has to be part of the
overall thinking of the organization.
The biggest opportunity is the way customer service
agents are measured. So many people believe productivity
means average handle time or talk time. How would you
feel if someone were behind you with a stopwatch all
day? I bet I would find some inefficiency; of course, you
Continued on next page

3164

Part:

Is Your Customer Service World-Class? (contd)


would really begin to hate your job, too. I know many
in the service world have an unsubstantiated fear that
removing this metric would lead to higher costs. Ive
found the opposite to be true. When we experimented
at the bank we found handle time rose 20 seconds for
2 months, then returned to normal. At the same time,
customer and employee satisfaction increased dramatically
and repeat calls went down significantly. This tends
to have cost benefits. It is important to remember
that a customer does not like being on a call longer
than necessary.
Another typical measurement is call qualitysome
arbitrary person saying how bad you are at your job.
While I was at the bank I worked for the vice president as
the manager of quality and customer satisfaction. I know
a little about this area. First, who is the best person to
measure handle time or quality? The fact is that person
is not in your call center, but rather the person calling.
The customer does not want a long call; he or she just
wants to be helped. Customers also know if the person
met their needs or not. I am a big supporter of customer
surveys to rate performance. I do not believe it should be
done immediately following the call because it is possible
the customer may not know if the situation is resolved,
but within a day or two it can be perfect. E-mail makes
this very feasible and a great way to follow up with the
customer. I am still a fan of listening to calls, but it is
not about a score, but rather grading the organization

or the center. For the agent, listening can be focused


on behaviors and helping the supervisor better coach
the agent. Other measurements that do make sense are
schedule adherence, because it is important to have staff
available when a customer calls. Finally, measuring repeat
calls is a strong financial measurement that also has
dramatic impact on customer satisfaction.
You will notice I did not mention sales. I think sales are
important, but only when you have actually resolved the
reason for the call and when the sale makes sense in
an effort to meet the customers needs. I think this can
easily be done with financial incentives with the caveat
(and coaching) that make the first priority resolving the
reason for the call. I also did not get into outsourcing,
which is a topic that can be very divisive. There are times
that outsourcing makes complete business sense,
but the key is to treat the contractors people like your
own staff. They need to have similar measurements
and the capabilities to share the voice of the customers
they service.
For those that say companies need to change their
culture and create a great experience through all contact
channels, I want you to know I agree. Together, we are
going to change the customer service world and help
many companies create world-class experiences for their
customers. I am looking forward to that day!

3174

Part:

Commentary by Esteban Kolsky


As Gail, Becky, Mitch, and Frank point out, it is not simply about the metrics. Other
issues to consider are knowledge, conversations, engagement, resolution, expectations,
and even culture and leadership. Make no mistakemeasurement is at the center of
each of these issues.
The bottom line is that you cannot succeed in proving a business case, a return
on investment, or even justifying a choice to move in a specific direction without
a measurement strategy in place. The question is not whether you need it, but how
you create it.

3184

Part:

How to Create a Measurement Strategy


Esteban Kolsky | Principal and Founder, ThinkJar
Creating a measurement strategy requires two things:
an understanding of the business strategy, its key
performance indicators, and goals and knowing the
difference between metrics and measurement.
Lets start with understanding the business. This is
obviously different for every organization. If you dont
know what your business is trying to do, how its
expected to perform in the near and mid-term, or its
goals, creating or implementing a measurement strategy
wont matter much. You must know the details of the
business to figure out how to adjust the measurement
strategy to support it. If the business goal for the next 12
months is to increase the number of customers, measuring
satisfaction wont help you reach that goalunless
you can prove a correlation (by metrics, not anecdotal
correlation) between satisfaction and the increase in the
number of customers.
To tell the difference between metrics and measurement
as it applies to customer service, lets use the next two
pictures. In Figure 3, you see the different metrics used
in customer service and how they correlate with any
transaction. These metrics are not specific data points,
rather the five areas of evolution identified at the
beginning of this document.

Metrics-Driven Measurement Model

transaction

process
operational

behavioral

effectiveness
client
agent attitudinal
demographic

Figure 3

The problem we see with a metrics-driven measurement


model is that each metric is monitored and acted on
separately. If there is a problem with demographic
information (e.g., a specific age group not performing as
expected), then that is the only portion of the process
that is addressed. The relationship among the three
elements is ignored. Also missing is the long-term,
strategic view that the demographics (in our example)
may be affected by something else in the transaction.
(In our example, a change in channels may change the
behavior of a particular demographic group.)
Continued on next page

3194

Part:

How to Create a Measurement Strategy (contd)


Figure 4 shows a strategic measurement model. While
it may still monitor and use the same or similar data
points, the way it performs is very different. A strategic
measurement model focuses on the end-to-end process,
not an individual metric. Not only does it monitor each
individual metric, as the other models do, but also builds
a methodology to monitor both the overall performance
across all metrics and how they correlate.

Strategic Measurement Model


effectiveness (right answer
at the right time)
loyalty

efficiency (fast and


cheap operations)

performance

satisfaction

customer

morale

effective

process

agent

end-to-end effectiveness and efficiency index

A strategic measurement model uses the metrics as


variables in a model that determines how the specific
process or function works in helping meet the strategic
goal. It is not concerned with what the strategic goal is
as much as which specific metrics and variables can be
used to help measure the performance and the correlation
to the goal. In other words, it emphasizes that having
a data model and processes in place to support the
companys strategic goals will help pinpoint and monitor
the right data points.

Demographic, sentimental, attitudinal, behavioral and


operational are variables in this model

Figure 4

Continued on next page

3204

Part:

How to Create a Measurement Strategy (contd)


Conclusion: Four Steps to Measurement Success
Now that you understand what it takes to change your
organizations measurement model from metrics-driven to
strategy-driven, there are four things you must do while
considering how to change the model.
1) Recruit Leaders. As you saw from the examples listed
above, a large part of the success of changing anything
in customer service requires executive support. Identify
the leaders in your customer service organization who
can assist you in implementing the change and who
understand what they stand to gain from itand work
with them.
2) Embrace Change Management. Another aspect that
must change is the culture. This is, obviously, easier
said than donebut not impossible. Changing the
culture is the realm of change management initiatives.
You should understand whether a specific methodology
or group already exists that could assist you in driving
this change, or follow the right steps to promote and
ensure the change.

3) Understand the Strategy. To succeed, you must know


where you are going. A tenet of implementing a strategicmeasurement model is to know the strategy you are
trying to support. Knowing the four components of the
strategy (mission, vision, goals, and objectives) enables
a strategic measurement model to be built around those
components and to support them with the data monitored
and collected.
4) Document Current State. Finally, you will need a
starting point, a benchmark of sorts to know how far your
strategy has progressed and how it is improving. Make
sure you have this ready before the implementation of the
new measurement strategyeven before the planning,
if possibleas it will become an essential component of
proving the value of the strategic-measurement model and
justifying future investments to improve the strategy as
changes in the business demand it.

3214

Further Reading
Does Social Media Help or Hurt Customer Service Becky Carroll
Customer Obsessed Service Becky Carroll
The Social Customer Becky Carroll
What Gets in the Way of Offering Great Customer Service? Becky Carroll
Social Hearing vs Social Listening There is a Difference Mitch Lieberman
CRM in the Age of the Social Web Mitch Lieberman
Very Detailed Thoughts on Social CRM and the Value It Provides Mitch Lieberman
The Changing Culture of the Contact Center Mitch Lieberman
Everything Starts with the Social Customer Insights Lou Dubois
The Economics of Social Business Peter Auditore
The SCRM Roadmap Part 1 of 5 Esteban Kolsky
A Methodology for Crafting Awesome Experiences Esteban Kolsky
Lets Call a Spade a Spade, and Social Media a Band-Aid Esteban Kolsky
About Them Customers Expectations Esteban Kolsky

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