28: Metrics with Meredith Molloy

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. This is episode 28, and I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is metrics, so stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. Today I'd like to welcome back Meredith Malloy. So, Meredith, the topic for this week is metrics, uh, how we measure performance of the team or individuals, service metrics, individual metrics, customer metrics. What are your favorites and why?

Meredith Molloy: 0:50

Ooh, my favorite metric. I always want and strive to measure and show a balanced measurement between, you know, the nitty-gritty, like tactical, the service levels, the average time to first responses, and the volume goals and the contact to order ratios. But I have to say I have a real sweet spot, and it's the experience part of me that's a little cushier. That, you know, I have a real sweet spot for the quality metrics. Um, and the whole and looking at them as a full picture of the not just support, but the you know, holistic customer experience um story that's being told at an organization. And so seeing how CSAT and MPS and customer effort all sort of intertwine. And if they're telling the same story together, if there is an outlier, um, I really love looking at those all together. The one that I personally really love and that I I think is a newer metric that hasn't picked up a ton of traction yet, um, but is that customer expectation score? Um, I think so. Tell me about that, because that's not one I've I've a great deal of exposure to. Yeah, yeah. Um, it's a newer metric. Um, it is similar to a customer effort score. Have we have we met your expectations and to what degree? I think we spend a lot of time and effort assuming what our customers expect and going back and forth over what we assume our customers expect. This metric, this question is sort of the only one that's out there that directly asks. So we can hear directly from the customers like, are we meeting their expectations? But it's with the score where we actually get to hear um firsthand if we're meeting customer expectations, why and why not. Um, and and the feedback can be really critical. It can be really harsh when when you're very directly asking a customer how we have not met their expectations.

Charlotte Ward: 3:05

But that actually makes it really informative, right?

Meredith Molloy: 3:09

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I think I strive to be at organizations that promote their leaders to, as cliche as it is, to lean into that critical feedback. Um, because I think that's where that's where the positive change can actually come from. Um, if all of a sudden all of your customers are saying, you're not meeting my expectations, and and this is why there's real meaningful information in there on how to how to create positive change, not just for your customers, but for your business.

Charlotte Ward: 3:45

Um I think what what's really great about that score, and thank you for explaining it to me, by the way, is that it would seem that's on the surface to eliminate anyway, a lot of the variants that you see around customer expectations on an on an individual level or on a you know geographical level or on a customer segment level, customers have different expectations. You know, one person's five out of five is an is not the same as another person's five out of five, right? So yeah.

Meredith Molloy: 4:18

And being able to chop that, you mentioned, you know, uh looking at different customer segments, looking at different customer cohorts, and really being able to get a feel based on that, you know, what is the new customer journey? What does that look like? Where are where are the gaps and the pain points? Some may be similar, which are definitely things to work upon. Um but seeing the the differences in in gaps and challenges between different customer segments um is always incredibly informative.

Charlotte Ward: 4:53

And it it removes a lot of those assumptions. I mean, there are certain common themes that we assume all customers have in terms of what they value in a service. I love I love a quality metric as well, because I think that we can measure those from the inside. What we can measure our assumptions from the inside, and that's what we're doing when we implement a quality program. But but I love the customer experience score idea. It's effectively measuring that from the outside, but in an objective way, it sounds great. I want to quote you back to you as well, Meredith, because in my very first interview on customersupportleaders.com in my leadership interview series, I asked about metrics. And one of the quotes that I pulled up, pulled out from that at the time, which I absolutely loved, and I think which speaks to quality that you mentioned before, um, you said we aim to have every customer that connects with us feel as though they were assisted with a sense of urgency in a human way and with all the information they need. And you related those to a measurement of immediacy, a measurement of empathy, and a measurement of knowledge. Um and I I really that really struck a chord with me at the time because I think that those are the three core tenets of any good quality program, right? Would you agree?

Meredith Molloy: 6:12

I I completely agree. Um, and I think too, when when putting together sort of what as a leader, what you want your customers' lasting impression to be of your support team, of your organization, of your product, you know, they're finding the metric that correlates with with each piece of the puzzle is so important.

Charlotte Ward: 6:40

That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash twenty-eight for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.