How we assessed the customer service performance of over 80 leading brands

The objective of the numero sponsored research into customer service performance was to establish a benchmark by which any consumer-focused business can evaluate its own performance. Amongst many findings, the research established good, bad and median performance in relation to the:

• Time taken to identify the right point of contact for a customer service enquiry
• Stated service level and actual response time for email enquiries
• Quality and relevance of online ‘self help’ (such as frequently asked questions)

Existence and quality of email, web chat and SMS as consumer enquiry channels.

The Research Group

The research was conducted amongst a group of UK businesses each with a significant online presence; including companies that operate in the retail, travel, leisure, financial services, entertainment, healthcare, logistics and utilities sectors. In total, over 80 UK businesses were included in the study, and compared against each other and peer-group companies who operate within their particular market sector.

Research Goals

The aim of the non-voice channel study was to understand:

• How businesses help consumers to ‘help themselves’ online
• Which published channels (telephone, email, web form, web chat, letter, etc.) were available to online customers and to quantify how easy it is to access this information
• Through blind testing, we reviewed how the contact channels like email and SMS performed against a series of customer service queries – comparing response times to published SLAs and assessing the quality and consistency of the responses provided.

Self help analysis

The online self  help capabilities of the research group websites were assessed in terms of six main categories. We focused on the self help service in terms of  the provision of:

• Simple listings of categorised self help topics
• Well developed, categorised lists related to enquiries
• Dynamic FAQ’s with most rated, top ten by category ,etc.
• The ability, or otherwise, to search either by keyword or natural language
• Secure account pages.

Contact channel analysis

Each business was reviewed to assess the possible channels available for a customer service enquiry, including phone, email, web form, SMS, call back, letter and fax. Customer service opening hours were recorded (when available) together with contact phone numbers, email addresses and published SLA’s setting expectations for response times for enquiries.

In order to assess the ease of contacting the target customer service departments, the email channel was used as the basis for further analysis. Following an initial Google search to locate the target website, the number of ‘clicks’ required and associated time taken was measured for each website up to the point where it was possible to begin typing an email. The visibility of the ‘contact us’ tab on the website was also assessed.

Email blind testing

Three emails were submitted to each business included in the study: one pre sales enquiry and two post sale customer service enquiries. The content of the submitted emails was the same for each market sector, though the content of the queries varied from sector to sector to ensure relevance.

The time taken from email submission to final answer was recorded for each email and an average email response time calculated for each business. The overall quality of the email responses were also assessed in terms of spelling and grammar, relevance to the question asked and completeness of the answer.

The ‘email journey’ was also assessed in terms of acknowledgement of the initial email and the setting of expectations in relation to the service level for responses.

Evaluation

Each of the businesses included in the research group was rated according to their performance using a balanced scorecard. The results from the balanced scorecard were then used to establish the best, worst and median performance for each of the areas by industry sector along with an overall league table by business.