How to Measure Customer Service: Benefits and Best Practices

Before you can improve customer service, you have to measure it. Customer service measurement reveals customer sentiment, business impacts, and areas for improvement.

High customer expectations and stark competition are amplifying the need for brands to earn and maintain customer trust. Consistent, high-quality customer service can earn trust and loyalty and transform the health of your entire business.

We’ll cover why measurement matters, what to measure, and how to set up a measurement program at scale.

Measuring customer service offers visibility into your service strengths and weaknesses, revealing opportunity gaps. A Deloitte study found that companies that actively measure customer satisfaction and frequently analyze customer feedback achieve higher overall customer experience scores .

Customer service measurement empowers companies to:

• Understand customer sentiment: Learn how the average customer feels about you, how this changes over time, and particular issues causing friction.
• Empower reps: Measurement from customer service software gives reps real-time information to help them better serve customers. In Agentforce for Service, for instance, reps can see the customer’s CSAT rating, lifetime value, and real-time sentiment analysis.
• Measure strategic changes: Measuring baseline metrics allows companies to gauge the success of service pilots, from new tools and training to integrating AI.
• Improve operational efficiency: Measurement helps service teams cut costs and optimize their operations. Rep-level measurement can identify struggling reps who need extra support.
• Identify business impact: In our research, 43% of consumers say that one poor customer experience will cause them to stop buying from that brand. Understand how customer service impacts revenue, from preventing churn to boosting repeat purchases.

Customer service metrics fall into three main categories: service quality, operations, and performance. Each type offers unique insights that can help you improve customer service.

Quality metrics answer the question, How do customers feel about your business? Common metrics include:

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT): CSAT asks customers how satisfied they are on a scale of 1 to 5.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS measures customer advocacy by asking customers how likely they are to recommend the company.
• Customer effort score (CES): CES measures how difficult or easy it was for customers to reach their goals.
• Sentiment: Sentiment breaks down interactions by positive, negative, or neutral sentiment. This can be self-reported or analyzed from text.

Good customer service feels priceless, but it always comes with a price tag. Operational metrics answer the question, How efficient is our team? For example:

• Case volume: This metric helps service leaders understand seasonal fluctuations and plan their resourcing and staffing.
• First contact resolution (FCR): FCR measures how often you resolve a customer’s issue in a single interaction.
• Average handle time (AHT): AHT measures the average time required to handle customer inquiries.
• Cost per resolution: Cost per resolution quantifies the average cost of each customer service ticket to your business.

Performance metrics measure the outcome of the customer service provided by the business. Common performance metrics include:

• Churn rate: Churn is the percentage of customers who stop buying from your company during a period.
• Retention rate: Retention rate measures the percentage of customers who continue to use your products or services during a period.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV): CLV measures the total revenue a company can expect from a customer.

Measuring customer service at scale takes more than a simple survey mechanism: it takes strategy, integrated tech, and accountability. When this happens, companies may measure too many metrics, the wrong metrics, or keep data siloed from decision-makers who can enact change. Follow these six steps to build a measurement program that’s a powerful change agent.

The biggest mistake that companies make is starting to measure without a vision and buy-in. Since customer service has far-reaching effects across your company, include leaders from the C-suite, sales, and operations in early strategic conversations. Start by taking a strategic look at what goals you want to achieve through customer service. For example:

• Increase CSAT or NPS rates
• Increase the repeat purchase rate or CLV
• Reduce churn
• Lower operational costs

Consumer-facing companies often focus on speed and resolution while business-to-business companies prioritize account health and renewals. Focus on two or three primary goals that you want to achieve, then build a measurement program around them.

For each goal, choose which KPIs to measure. Avoid collecting data for its own sake – every metric should ladder up to a strategic outcome. For instance, if you want to resolve cases faster, you may want to track AHT, FCR, or average wait time.

Next, integrate your data in one place. If your chat logs live in one system, phone calls in another, and survey responses in a third, you’ll struggle to gain the insights you need.

Fix data silos by integrating your data into one unified customer data platform. The ideal platform is based on a customer relationship management (CRM) tool and integrates sales, customer engagement history, and customer service interactions. Customer service operations software like Agentforce for Service gives both a high-level view of customer service metrics and individual customer profiles.

Static spreadsheets or slide decks aren’t good enough for today’s needs. Enterprise teams need dynamic dashboards that surface metrics in real-time so they can spot trends, flag inefficiencies, and improve experiences. Rather than building this yourself, look for a contact center software with pre-built, customizable analytics dashboards.

Next, determine how you will collect data and customer feedback. You should already have the data you need for operational metrics like case volume in your customer service software. Coordinate data sharing with other departments for performance metrics like CLV or churn.

For quality metrics that require customer input, determining where and how you collect feedback is key. Some companies choose a regular cadence for surveying customers – one example is sending a quarterly satisfaction survey.

However, for best results, consider trigger-based surveys like an NPS survey after a service call or a CES question as the last step in a service interaction. Embedding feedback steps into your customer service workflows will increase the likelihood of responses and equip you with real-time feedback. Map out your feedback journeys and be wary of survey fatigue.

To ensure that insights translate into action, embed measurement into governance and planning. Set a measurement cadence for each KPI and schedule reviews. It might make sense for an internal team to analyze operational metrics daily or weekly while meeting cross-departmentally once a month to analyze performance.

Companies that analyze their customer satisfaction results daily or hourly report significantly higher CX scores , Deloitte research shows.

For accountability, assign ownership of each KPI to service leaders and reps. That way, it stops being just a number, and they have a personal stake in the results.

The success of a customer service measurement program often comes down to the quality of the data itself. Follow these tips to increase your response rates and gather clean data.

• Blend qualitative and quantitative insights: Customer metrics like CSAT and NPS are valuable, but they don’t tell the whole story. Balance quantitative metrics with open-ended questions or conversation transcripts to uncover why customers feel the way they do.
• Standardize metric definitions across teams: When different teams collect data (for example, field service teams vs. call center reps), you may run into variations that affect your data quality. Make sure that all teams are using standard metric definitions, like a scale of 1 to 5 versus a scale of 1 to 10.
• Design surveys for high response: Increase your response rates by keeping surveys short and mobile-friendly, allowing customers to respond with a simple text message or input. Incentivize responses to in-depth surveys with personalized follow-ups or small rewards.
• Use an omnichannel service platform: Rather than integrating a third-party survey platform, use a customer service software with survey mechanisms and dashboards built in.

The beauty of an effective measurement program isn’t the data itself — it’s what you can do with it. Here’s how to translate insights into action steps.

Segmenting your data is one of the most powerful steps you can take to turn insights into action. For example, if your churn levels are high in the first 30 days, measure just new customers to help you optimize your onboarding experience.

If your satisfaction and performance metrics are trending in the wrong direction, it’s important to know why. Categorize your tickets by issue and share the results with your product team so they can prioritize fixes. A high CES may indicate that your customer service process is a point of friction, not the product or service itself.

Machine learning is excellent at analyzing patterns and trends. AI-powered tools for customer service like Agentforce can turn rows of numbers into meaningful insights.

Successful customer service is about more than simply responding to tickets. It’s about understanding the full customer journey and acting on insights in real time. Agentforce for Service gives service teams a unified, AI-powered command center to capture, analyze, and act on every interaction.

• Unified data, real-time visibility: Every customer touchpoint across phone, chat, email, SMS, or self-service is captured in a single platform so managers can spot issues before they escalate.
• Customer-level insights: In Salesforce, reps see a customer’s full history and real-time sentiment at a glance so they can detect at-risk customers and provide tailored customer support.
• AI that turns feedback into action: Agentforce for Service automatically analyzes survey responses, case notes, and conversation transcripts to surface root causes behind low scores.

Customer service measurement is important so leaders can make better decisions and create a service operation that’s constantly learning and adapting. When you understand the quality, effectiveness, and performance of your customer service, you can find solutions that move you from reactive to proactive. The result is a satisfied, loyal customer base and a healthy bottom line.