In a very homogeneous market, relationship management is a true differentiator in user experience. In this context, using customer service assessment methods plays an important role in increasing the quality of service desk support. Here are some ideas of how to use it in your company.
1. Choose an assessment method
The first thing to do is choose the method that best fits your company’s work model. This is important because it influences the type of survey form to be used. See below two of the most commonly used methods.
NPS (Net Promoter Score)
NPS (Net Promoter Score) was created by consulting firm Bain & Company in 2003 to predict the level of customer loyalty with a company. It helps identify the likelihood of consumers to recommend your solutions to friends, relatives, and other professionals.
To achieve this, the customer service assessment form should contain questions about customer perception of the brand, satisfaction with the overall experience, and likelihood of consumers to recommend the product/service to other people. The answers to these strategic questions should have a score of 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely).
Based on the assessments, customers should be rated as follows:
- Detractors: customers reporting negative experiences with your company;
- Passives: customers who are not fully satisfied and may seek the services/products of the competition;
- Promoters: customers who are satisfied with your company and show a high level of brand loyalty.
CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)
The purpose of the CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) method is to measure the percentage of customers who are satisfied with your company. Based on the answers, areas for improvement are identified in the customer journey to optimize their perception of the overall experience.
The satisfaction survey forms have very simple questions, such as: “How satisfied are you with the service you’ve just received?”
The answers from customers receive a score of 1 to 5 in a scale that indicates the following:
- Very dissatisfied;
- Somewhat dissatisfied;
- Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied;
- Somewhat satisfied;
- Very satisfied.
2. Evaluate customer service on all channels
In service desk, using omnichannel platforms is an increasingly common practice, that is, service provided through multiple touch points. The most common channels are:
- email;
- chat;
- telephone;
- social media;
- WhatsApp;
- apps.
Customer service assessment methods should be applied to all channels. Then, you can manage priorities and direct efforts to implement improvements according to the specific needs of each channel.
3. Make clear objective questions
In addition to the essential questions of the assessment method, you can add other questions to help obtain feedback about a specific area or functionality. But avoid an excessive number of questions, which can make the client give up answering, and use open-ended questions, that is, questions that can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”.
For example:
- If you are dissatisfied with our service, what are the reasons?
- What are your suggestions to improve our customer service?
- What would you change in our service channels?
4. Allow anonymous evaluations
If the customer identity is not critical to your analysis, consider allowing anonymous evaluations. Customers often feel more comfortable and give honest opinions when not linked with their names.
5. Encourage customer participation
If your company finds it difficult to engage customers to answer surveys, it is essential to adopt some strategies to encourage them. These strategies depend on the channels your company uses and the type of service your company provides.
If your team is in constant contact with customers, you can instruct team members to remind customers to answer the survey. Also, if the service desk is receptive, include in the service script an invitation for the customer to answer the survey at the end of the contact.
6. Emphasize the importance of assessment to your team
It’s crucial to emphasize the importance of the customer service assessment to your service desk team, so it can become a rich source of information. All team members have to understand that user feedback helps improve internal processes and facilitates work over time.
7. Use feedback to improve service
Obviously, the information obtained through customer service assessment has to be reviewed carefully to generate valuable insights. Pay attention to repeated information reported by customers and prioritize cases of low score to find the causes of poor service and reverse the scenario.
Negative feedback helps identify weaknesses in processes, tools, and behaviors. However, bear in mind that customer is not always right. Critical analysis is essential to screen the complaints and consider those that actually make sense.
Considering all aspects discussed here, managers should implement a cycle of continuous improvement with action plans focused on increasing the overall quality of service desk support.
But process efficiency also depends on specialized management tools. See how to implement good practices to improve incident management in your company.
