Slack for Customer Service: What Metrics to Track

Using Slack for customer service allows agents and clients to work and collaborate on issues in new and more efficient ways, boosting productivity and strengthening relationships.

But sometimes comes a time when your customer satisfaction rates hit rock bottom. And that’s when you decide to look deeper into customer service metrics on Slack.

And there are indeed many indicators to look out for, from customer satisfaction scores to average response time or engagement stats. 

Some are more valuable than others, but they all reveal the good and the bad about your business. And with such insights, you can work on improving your customer service and unlocking your company’s full potential.

So, if you’re using Slack for customer service and aren’t sure which metrics to monitor, read on.

Overview of Different Types of Metrics

Measuring the effectiveness of your company's customer support or service efforts is paramount to improving your customer experience. After all, satisfied customers are more likely to return and continue doing business with you, which is undoubtedly your ultimate goal, isn't it?

However, to fully grasp these metrics and gain a comprehensive understanding, it is essential to delve into them at a more granular level.

Broadly speaking, there are three categories of metrics: 

• Customer support metrics
• Customer service metrics
• Customer engagement analytics.

Yes, they sound similar (and often are used interchangeably), but they focus on slightly different aspects of your customer service provision. 

Let’s walk you through the differences.

Customer Support Metrics

Customer support metrics are crucial in helping organizations measure the quality and speed of the service they provide to customers. According to HubSpot, speed is critical in B2B customer support as buyers have higher expectations compared to if you were selling consumer goods.

Keeping this in mind, customer support metrics offer a clear understanding of how effectively your customer service team is handling customer concerns and whether they are meeting the set expectations. It's like having a yardstick to gauge the effectiveness of your customer support efforts.

The most common customer support metrics are as follows:

• Average Response Time (ART) refers to the average duration it takes for a support agent to acknowledge and provide an initial response to a customer query or issue.
  
• Resolution Time denotes the interval between the moment a customer reports a problem or inquiry and the successful resolution of their request.
  
• First-Contact Resolution (FCR) Rate is a metric typically expressed as a percentage and measures the number of customer interactions resolved satisfactorily at the initial point of contact.
  
• Ticket Volume is the total count of support requests a customer support team receives within a given period.
  
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a metric used to measure how satisfied a customer is after a customer support interaction. The score is typically obtained through surveys asking customers to rate their experience.

Measuring customer support metrics is vital for organizations, especially in the B2B setting. It's not just about making customers happy, though that's obviously crucial. Customer support metrics yield valuable insights for growth and service improvement.

Thus, companies that take this data-driven approach can fine-tune their support strategies, give customers better experiences, and make smart decisions about allocating resources and optimizing processes.

Customer Service Metrics

Next, we come to customer service metrics. These metrics focus on a broader range of measurements that evaluate the overall customer service experience you provide as a company.

So, if customer support metrics focus on issue resolution and speed, customer service metrics consider the entire customer journey while evaluating customer satisfaction at various touchpoints.

Here are some popular customer service metrics:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer loyalty and brand advocacy (customers’ likelihood to recommend your company to others).
  
• Customer Effort Score (CES) gauges the ease of the customer's journey throughout their interaction with a company. It considers factors such as the seamlessness of processes and the intuitiveness of the user interface. A low CES signifies a company's success in creating an effortless and frictionless customer experience.
  
• Customer Retention Rate is the percentage of customers that continue doing business with a company. An opposite metric would be customer churn rate (a percentage of customers that stop using your business).
  
• Average Handling Time (AHT) is the average duration required to manage a customer interaction from beginning to end. AHT emphasizes the importance of optimizing each moment of customer-agent engagement.
  
• Service Level Agreement (SLA) Compliance extends beyond contractual obligations and embodies the importance of meeting and exceeding customer expectations. Typically, this metric is expressed as a percentage of customer interactions handled within a pre-defined SLA timeframe.

Tracking customer service metrics is critical in establishing a solid reputation, regardless of your industry. It contributes to revenue growth, fosters customer loyalty, and enhances your overall business approach.

As per McKinsey research, 2 out of 3 leading B2B companies use customer analytics to make decisions and unlock growth. Thus, keeping a close eye on customer service metrics is vital as it enables you to enhance customer satisfaction and optimize operations effectively.

Customer Engagement Analytics

Last but not least, we have customer engagement analytics. These metrics help you gauge customer engagement with products, services, marketing campaigns, and various touchpoints. They reveal valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and interactions.

Customer engagement analytics focus on measuring the value your customers derive from interactions with your products and services. They also reveal your customers’ level of engagement with your company or brand.

Let’s take an example of a SaaS project management software company that implements feature adoption tracking to identify which features are popular and which are underused. 

They find that time-tracking is rarely utilized compared to task management. Leveraging this metric, they send targeted email campaigns highlighting the benefits of time-tracking in improving project efficiency. As a result, more customers start using the feature, leading to increased engagement and customer satisfaction.

However, feature adoption tracking is one of many customer engagement metrics you can track. Here are a few others:

• Interaction Tracking is one of the ways to track customer engagement analytics via the company’s owned channels, including website, app, social media interactions, email engagement, live chat sessions, or phone conversations.
  
• Click-through Rate (CTR): A percentage representing the ratio of clicks on a specific link, advertisement, or call-to-action to the total number of times it was displayed or shown to users.
  
• Conversion Rate is the percentage of users who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a registration form.
  
• Time on Site/App: the average duration a user spends on a brand's website or an app.
  
• Bounce Rate: a percentage of website visitors that leave after visiting only one page.
  
• Social Media Engagement defines various social media engagement analytics that measure user involvement online.
  
• Customer Behavior Analysis focuses on customers’ browsing patterns and purchase history to identify trends and patterns that provide insights into their engagement and potential upsell or cross-sell opportunities.
  
• Sentiment Analysis involves natural language processing to determine the emotional tone and attitude expressed in written or spoken text, such as social media posts, reviews, or customer feedback.
  
• Cohort Analysis analyzes user groups over time to identify trends and patterns and helps tailor engagement strategies accordingly.

Now that we've covered the various metrics organizations need to track let's delve into the four most crucial ones to monitor on Slack.

1. CSAT Support Ratings

Customer Satisfaction Score, or CSAT for short, is an easy-to-collect indicator that helps you to understand recent customer experience or measures the level of satisfaction after closing a support ticket.

CSAT surveys usually encompass a simple scale of 1 to 5, or “yes” or “no” options, to questions such as

1. How would you rate today’s interaction on a scale of 1-5?
2. Are you satisfied with the solution? Yes/No.

Soliciting CSAT surveys, tracking your scores, and comparing against the industry’s benchmarks should be the bare minimum for your customer service metrics. 

Nevertheless, a recent study suggests that CSAT scores are on a sharp decline across all sectors; thus, it’s crucial to analyze other metrics to gain a complete picture.

2. Average Response Time

For over 60% of customers, long wait times for a resolution is the most frustrating part of customer service.

Thus, you should track the average time it takes your support agents to respond to a ticket after it is opened.

Of course, using Slack over email already gives you a competitive edge since you can technically get back to your customer faster. Even so, you should strive to improve your scores since it leads to higher customer satisfaction.

3. Average Resolution Time

Sometimes solutions are easy, and sometimes not, especially in a B2B setting. If your client runs into a technical problem and you need to engage your dev team, you might troubleshoot longer than your customers want you to.

Average resolution time measures how long it takes to resolve and close each customer ticket. High average resolution times might indicate issues, such as your agents asking the wrong questions and failing to encourage the clients to elaborate on their issues.

And just because you’re using Slack for customer service, bombarding customers with questions but not eliciting the required information might slow you down.

4. Engagement Analytics

Lastly, it is always useful to track customer versus vendor engagement over time. You might want to know who your top internal contributors are so you recognize their effort or perhaps identify the gap in your service provision that needs extra attention.

Likewise, you should know who the people on the other end of the stick are, reporting the most problems or asking the most questions. Are they constantly running into issues? Is it time for your customer success manager to step in?

Measuring engagement analytics can help you spot trends, capture negative signals and boost your customer experience.

Thena: One Solution To Track it All

If you find it hard to track customer service metrics on Slack, you need a solution that does it all and more for you.

When your support team uses one tool to handle tickets, and your customers are on Slack, tracking metrics and collecting engagement data can be challenging.

Build tracking of customer service metrics on Slack into your workflows with Thena!