The most common are complaints, customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, Net Promoter Score, customer retention, wait time, resolution time and first contact resolution. Most businesses track four or five that fit how their customers reach them, such as wait time for a call center or mystery shop scores for a store.
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Tracking Customer Service: 10 Metrics to Review
Tracking customer service means choosing a few numbers that show how customers are being treated and reviewing them as regularly as you review sales. Most businesses track four or five of the ten customer service metrics below, picked to fit how their customers reach them.
Sales and expenses land on a report every month, but customer service doesn't have its own line on the income statement, so it's easy to go weeks without looking at it.
Service still shows up in those numbers later, because customers who have a bad experience buy less and stop sending referrals, and replacing them costs more than keeping them would have.
Tracking customer service quality gives you an earlier warning, and sharing the results each month lets your team see how their work shows up in the numbers.
Jump To: The 10 Metrics | How to Track | Example | FAQ
10 Customer Service Metrics to Track
You won't need all ten, so start with the ones that match how your customers reach you and what they complain about most.
What Customers Tell You
1. Customer complaints. Keep every complaint in one log, whether it comes in by phone, email, a review site or at the counter, and sort them by type. A sample goal might be fewer than 5 complaints a month for every 1,000 customers. Sorting by type helps, because three complaints about the same thing usually point to a process that needs fixing. Dealing With Angry Customers covers how to respond.
2. Survey scores (CSAT). Ask one or two questions right after a visit or call, such as "How satisfied were you with your service today?" on a 1 to 5 scale. Your customer satisfaction score, or CSAT, is the share of customers who answer 4 or 5, and a sample goal is 90% or higher. The Customer Service Quiz and Questionnaire has sample questions you can use.
3. Net Promoter Score (NPS). Ask "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?" on a 0 to 10 scale. Customers who answer 9 or 10 are promoters, 7 or 8 are passives and 0 to 6 are detractors. Subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, so if 60% are promoters and 15% are detractors, your NPS is 45. Compare your score from one quarter to the next.
4. Mystery shop scores. A mystery shopper visits or calls as a regular customer and scores the experience against your standards, such as greeting the customer by name and following up after the visit. Each shop is scored as the percentage of standards met, and a sample goal is 90%. Customer Service Tips covers mystery shopping in more detail.
What Customers Do
5. Customer retention and churn. Your retention rate is the share of the customers you started a period with who are still with you at the end, and churn is the share who left. The Customer Retention Formula shows how to figure both and includes a calculator. A good rate depends on your business, so measure where you are first and aim to hold or improve it each quarter.
6. Referrals and repeat business. Ask every new customer how they heard about you, and count the ones who name a current customer. If your customers don't sign up for anything, also track the share who bought more than once in the period. A sample goal might be 1 in 4 new customers coming from a referral.
How Quickly You Respond
7. Wait time. Track how long customers wait on hold, in line or for a reply to an email or message. Most phone systems report hold time, and a sample goal might be answering 80% of calls within 30 seconds. For email, many businesses aim to reply within one business day.
8. Resolution time. Measure the hours or days from the moment a problem is reported until it's fixed and the customer knows it. Some problems take longer than others, so set a separate goal for each type, such as 24 hours for a billing error and 5 business days for a warranty repair.
9. First contact resolution. Count the share of problems solved on the first call, visit or email, without a callback or a second trip. A sample goal is 75% to 85%. When this number drops, look at training and at whether your people have the authority to fix common problems on the spot.
Your Team
10. Employee turnover. Divide the number of employees who left during the year by your average number of employees. Customers notice when the person who knew them is gone, and a new employee needs time to learn your standards, so watch turnover in customer-facing jobs most closely. Customer Loyalty and Retention Strategy shows how keeping good employees helps you keep customers.
“It is the customer who determines what a business is.”
- Peter Drucker
How to Track Customer Service With Your Team
The simplest way to track customer service is a one-page scorecard that you review with your team every month.
- Pick four or five metrics that fit how your customers reach you. A call center might lean on wait time and first contact resolution, while a store might start with complaints and mystery shop scores.
- Set a goal for each one, and write down where the number comes from and who pulls it each month, so it's figured the same way every time.
- Put the metrics in a simple table with the goal in one column and each month's result beside it.
- Review the scorecard as a standing item at your monthly team meeting. Business Meeting Agendas shows how to make your key numbers a standing topic.
- Choose one number that missed its goal, find out why and agree on what the team will change before the next review.
Tracking Customer Service Example
Luis owns a heating and air conditioning service company with 14 employees, including 8 technicians and 3 people who answer the phones. He reviews a four-line scorecard with his team on the first Monday of every month.
LUIS'S SCORECARD
What he tracks: First-visit fix rate, which is first contact resolution for a service call, along with phone wait time, complaints and the score on a two-question survey texted after each job.
What he noticed: In January his technicians fixed 82% of jobs on the first visit, but in February that fell to 71%, or 291 of 410 calls. When he pulled the 119 jobs that needed a second trip, 84 of them were waiting on a part the technician didn't have on the truck.
What he changed: He and his lead technician built a standard parts list for each truck from the last year of jobs, and the warehouse now restocks every truck on Friday afternoon.
Two months later: His first-visit fix rate was up to 85%, and complaints were down from 9 in February to 4 in April.
| Measure | Goal | Feb | Mar | Apr |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First-visit fix rate | 80% | 71% | 79% | 85% |
| Average phone wait time | Under 30 sec. | 41 sec. | 34 sec. | 28 sec. |
| Complaints | Under 5 | 9 | 6 | 4 |
| Survey score (4 or 5 out of 5) | 90% | 84% | 88% | 93% |
Fewer return trips also meant fewer customers calling to ask when their part would arrive, and that's what brought the phone wait time down.
Tracking Customer Service FAQ
The questions below address what leaders most commonly ask about tracking customer service.
Click on the (+) sign below to expand each question. Click the (-) sign to collapse it again.
What are the most important customer service metrics?
How do you track customer service quality?
Choose a few metrics, set a goal for each and record the results on a one-page scorecard every month. Review the scorecard with your team, look closely at any number that missed its goal and agree on what to change before the next review.
What is a customer service scorecard?
A customer service scorecard is a one-page table that lists the service metrics you track, the goal for each one and the result for each month. You and your team can see the trend at a glance and spot a problem before it shows up in sales.
What's the difference between CSAT and NPS?
CSAT asks how satisfied a customer was with a recent visit or call, usually on a 1 to 5 scale. NPS asks how likely they are to recommend you on a 0 to 10 scale, so it reflects their overall loyalty more than a single experience.
How often should you review customer service metrics?
Most teams review them monthly and look at longer trends each quarter. Numbers that move quickly, like wait time and complaints, may be worth a weekly check, especially after a change in staffing or hours.
More Customer Service Articles
Richard Gorham has led teams in financial services for more than 30 years, from retail branches and operations to investments and insurance, and he still leads a team today.
He founded Leadership-Tools.com in 2002 to give managers free, practical tools like the ones he used in his various leadership roles. Every tool here has been used in a real workplace and comes with a filled-in example you can follow.
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