30: Metrics with Simone Secci

Charlotte Ward: 0:12

Hello and welcome to the Customer Support Leaders podcast. This is episode 30 already. 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 Simone Secchi. So, Simone, the topic for this week is metrics. What are your favorites and what stories have you got about metrics?

Simone Secci: 0:44

Absolutely. So this connects directly with stepping into a leadership position. I think the biggest challenge I faced in stepping into a leadership position was understanding what a KBI was, because I had no idea. What data is, what data-driven really means, it's sort of like a buzzword at the time, uh what what it means to actually like you know use data to back your your decisions, both with your team and with other um people in the company.

Charlotte Ward: 1:32

It does take, and and I wish this wasn't a journey of discovery for every single leader, it takes a long time to figure out exactly what a metric means, and therefore how you how you accurately measure the very center, you know, the the bullseye target of what you want that metric to tell you. There is so much blurring at the edges.

Simone Secci: 1:53

If you had a dashboard, at the dashboard where you have total interaction, public and internal comments right next to what types of issues people are dealing with. So having the two right next to each other, understanding the whole the whole picture for the whole team, um, it will basically just kill the need that we have individual metrics. Because if you have both and you can see them.

Charlotte Ward: 2:19

That's a powerful statement. You've got the dashboard to to beat them all.

Simone Secci: 2:24

Yes.

Charlotte Ward: 2:25

So so what are you looking for? So so describe to me then. So so on one side of your dashboard, you've got a number of interactions broken down by agent or I have them broken broken down by agent, and I have them for the whole team and two different dashboards.

Simone Secci: 2:40

But always what they do is that right next to this, to public comments plus internal comments, you have types of issues that are dealt with. You know, obviously they have to be big buckets.

Charlotte Ward: 2:51

Yeah, so you so you're trying to draw conclusions around which areas are sucking most of your agents' time effectively with that that dashboard or 100%. What are you bucketing for in terms of types of issues? Is is that requests for enhancements, product issues, um how-tos, those kind of things?

Simone Secci: 3:10

It really depends on the product. Obviously, always you're gonna have um, you know, you're gonna have product feedback, you're gonna have um and so feedback positive and negative, then you're gonna have product information, you're gonna have bug reports, and um uh, you know, this these three things I think everybody's gonna have.

Charlotte Ward: 3:29

Yeah, and I think you're right. I think they have to be big buckets because once you start to get too granular with with any metric and certainly with that kind of it it it loses meaning. I mean, you once you start looking at a tiny, tiny piece of the action, but it's it's too much of a pinpoint focus to be meaningful to you as a leader to have an impact on how you deliver the service.

Simone Secci: 3:51

Yes, I guess.

Charlotte Ward: 3:53

I guess I guess it's um easy to default to dashboards and metrics as looking for problems, but of course they can also tell us a positive story. They can tell your dashboard, for example, I guess could tell you a more positive story of you know, particular growth in certain areas, in certain skill sets. It can tell you particular expertise that you might not necessarily have spotted, particularly if they're remote, you know. Um so it gives you that kind of clarity of of the skills that uh people are building as well, right?

Simone Secci: 4:26

100%. I mean, uh once again, you see somebody uh performing particularly well in terms of like CZE, and and then maybe you can couple that with the type of issues they're working on, and that tells you like was it okay, they're working on a lot of bugs and they're making a lot of people happy. And if they were in in in a in an escalated support position, maybe they should be right. And and then they or of people that are particularly skilled at writing, like you you can't there's a lot that you can learn that maybe you you you know you haven't learned uh by just reading tickets that they that they work on. Yeah. Um in that sense. And and also, yeah, analyzing uh I do a lot of like issue analysis, so trends over time with specific uh issues or specific targets or or or tracking outages, for example. The other side, external side, is presenting a story to people that are outside support, presenting the core the the right story and and within the terms that you deem appropriate because you get one chance to uh you know to advocate for yourself in terms of uh accomplishments and challenges that you're facing.

Charlotte Ward: 5:46

So And I think that's really I think that's really key, and it's one of my favorite topics, it is is that the metric as a standalone, however pinpoint accurate you make it, uh the metric as a standalone entity is fairly meaningless. It's the story that you're trying to tell with it that's actually is as important to you as a leader, I think, as it is to the wider business. I I think it's really important to understand what you're trying to extract from these metrics, whatever the metric is that you're using. It's like I always say, ask the right question. Don't just pull some numbers and hope you'll look at a screen and learn something. You have to understand what the question is that you're trying to answer. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash 30 for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.