117: CSAT with Mo McKibbin

Charlotte Ward: 0:12

Hello and welcome to episode 117 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is customer satisfaction, so stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Mo McKibb and Mo. It's lovely to have you back again. This week we're talking about CSAT.

Mo McKibbin: 0:42

Ah, yes. CSAT.

Charlotte Ward: 0:45

Oh, oh, such enthusiasm.

Mo McKibbin: 0:48

No, I love, I actually do, there's a lot of controversial feelings in the support community about the value of CSAT and what's valuable about it and how to use it. I personally think it is incredibly valuable, but I do think about it as really more like a spice than a meal. So it's not uh it's not the protein, it's not even like a really good side. Um, but you know, something more like salt or pepper or uh paprika where it gives, you know, it gives a lot of flavor. It can be really useful for enhancing. Um, but if you use too much or rely um exclusively on it, it's you know, it's you're gonna have a very unhealthy uh support, you know, m measurements for support.

Charlotte Ward: 1:38

Yeah, I I think I think you're right. I think it's it's one of those things that people feel a lot of uh that people are really ambivalent about, right? That there's a lot of antipathy and there's also a lot of love. And I think that um you can use it in a number of different ways. And I think that um I think that the kind of classic idea of just like my my my go-to example of CSAT is when you're at at the bathrooms at in an airport.

Mo McKibbin: 2:07

This is clean, this is dirty. Yeah. Fix this, yeah, fix this, sir.

Charlotte Ward: 2:13

Yeah, there's a yeah, exactly. The happy face, smile or sad face, maybe maybe a middle face, right? As you leave that what's actually what does it tell you, right?

Mo McKibbin: 2:24

Well, and that's actually a really awesome point. It's like because when are you if a bathroom, if you go into a bathroom and it's disgusting, you are going to unhappy face because you want to fix that. Like you're like, but like when are you like, wow, that was a lovely bathroom experience? Like, you never I'm gonna put a happy face so everybody knows how happy I was to use this bathroom in the airport. Um, and I think it's similar, yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 2:49

Yeah, and because that is a CSAP measure, right? And I think that I think I this I've just had kind of just in the last two sentences, a bit of an epiphany about that because that's that's always I always kind of go to that as a somewhat ridiculous answer. But what you said there about what your expectations are, you really only want to care, you only really only care like about two or three things when you're going to a bathroom. So actually, you don't perhaps need all of the nuances that you might like to get in other support scenarios around like all of that personal feedback. Please tell us how we did, you know, what what can you tell us about the agent that served you and everything else? Because what do you know when you're running a bar bathroom at an airport? You know who was on duty and you know the the three things that your customer cares about, right? So you you know they want it to be clean, they want it to be open, and they want it to be private, or you know it's that that might actually be it, right?

Mo McKibbin: 3:45

Well, and I do like, and this is why I love CSAP too, is it can be um it can be the canary in the coal mine or it can be um it can be a great morale booster, um, but like it really isn't necessarily, I think, that valuable for giving you deep insights into how people are doing or how to get better. But if you see it's great for just measuring broad stroke trends. So if like you have, you know, 98, 100% happiness rating, you're like you you can feel good about that. Like you can feel good that like um for the most part, uh trending-wise, very few people are unhappy when they come into the bathroom. I've also noticed the higher your happiness rating is, like the lower percent of customers actually rate you for exactly the reason that we kind of talked about, where it's like nobody says this was a great bathroom experience. Like usually happiness is silence. And and you know, um, and that's another reason why I, you know, I you know, I've talked with you before about um how much I like connecting support to revenue because you know, ultimately what measures a happy customer is they're they keep paying for the product, they're expanding, they're buying more, and they're referring people. Like um, those are the things that really show if someone's happy. And I do think another thing that's really funny about CSAT too is like I have found too that sometimes, you know, people won't give us great ratings, and people will sometimes even even give us, would would sometimes even in my in my past never give us negative ratings, but have like a lot of critical feedback. And then I would meet them at a conference and they're like, oh my god, we love Help Scout and like all this stuff. And it's like it is such an interesting thing because sometimes people are very deeply invested in your product and your um and your customer support, that they have a lot to say, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're unhappy, it actually means that they're deeply invested. Um, and they want to make it better and they want to help and they want to contribute.

Charlotte Ward: 5:48

So you have to give them the opportunity to do that, then, right? That's when the the that's when the three smiley faces are not going to do you any favors, and you actually need that more qualitative feedback. You can do some basic quality quantitative measures, but the qualitative deep dive that you get in that text is is the important things that comes out of that investment in your service, isn't it?

Mo McKibbin: 6:10

Yep, absolutely. And then um the uh yeah, so I think like using it as a canary in the coal mine, um, and using it as just a general litmus test for how things are doing. I think there's nothing wrong with that. If you see some um negative ratings cropping up, it's a really good indicator, like, oh, something is a foot. Uh, but it's not necessarily um, like you shouldn't hang your hat on on CSAT. Um, just have it as a as a is almost like a monitoring system. Um, and then the other thing I will say is what how to not use CSAT is I um really do not think that it is, unless it's like trending issues, should ever be monitored for individual agent performance, um, simply because there are so many factors uh that you know come into if it's like a good experience or a bad experience. At the agent level for CSAT, I don't think that you should measure individual performance. It should more be used as a coaching tool. And again, uh like a litmus test to look for trends. Um and only only use it to kind of like lift people up if they're trending down and like, but again, it's a spice, it's not a meal.

Charlotte Ward: 7:26

And you make uh I like the idea of using it as a coaching tool. And in fact, I think there's an interim stage, it is that it's uh it's perhaps like in terms of like individual pieces of feedback, maybe there's coaching opportunities for certain agents, but I think also in terms of those big trends that you're pulling out, I think that they are information that you feed into programs, aren't they? They're information that you feed into your quality program or into your process improvement or whatever else. They aren't necessarily and probably almost never truly indicative of an individual.

Mo McKibbin: 8:01

Absolutely. 100% agree. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash one one seven for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.