39: Looking Beyond the Numbers with Meredith Molloy

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. This is episode 39. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is Looking Beyond the Numbers. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. Today I'd like to welcome back Meredith Malloy. Meredith, the topic for this week is looking beyond the numbers. I'd love you to make of that what you will.

Meredith Molloy: 0:44

Great. Yeah. You know, for me, I'm a firm believer in, you know, in the numbers and in leading and being a support leader that is data driven. I think that said, what is even more important is to look beyond the numbers and balance it out in a human way. For me, I lead in a way where almost every metric that is a number, there is almost always a qualitative piece of feedback from customers that is the other side of the coin to that number. And when presenting numbers to an organization, to senior stakeholders, it's always important to always provide the why that lies within that qualitative feedback and not just that, oh, well, CSAT is, you know, 92, yay! But really looking at that verbatim feedback behind some of those metrics that is so incredibly important. I think looking beyond the numbers, it's also looking beyond the single number as a leader to lean on just one number that and then say, okay, we're doing great, because this one number says that. You know, for me, I'm I'm a really strong believer that one number never tells the whole story. And two numbers probably don't tell the whole story. And five numbers might not even tell the whole story. Um, and so as a as a as a support leader, it's really important to find for your organization what those numbers are that can show as full of a picture as possible. I think from a department reporting standpoint, as a leader, that's important. And I think it trickles right down to leading a team and the metrics that you provide to your people. For me, I always want to make sure that the metrics that are my team's individual KPIs that they are balanced, where it is not all about volume and how many tickets they're getting done out of the queue. It is not all about immediacy and how quick, how quickly they're done with no care to the quality. It's not all about it being super high quality, but you're only answering two tickets a day. You know, there there is a balance that is different for every organization. Um, but I think it's really important as a leader to define and recognize what that balance is.

Charlotte Ward: 3:27

Yeah, it it's the narrative, isn't it? As you say, it's the narrative that you build from the numbers that's actually the most important piece of this. It's the the picture that you build from that jigsaw, definitely. How do you find you relate the number to that narrative? Do you start from a place where you have a story you want to tell and you find numbers that do or don't support it? Kind of a scientific method, you know, you've got this theory and or do you start with the data and then look at the story it tells you?

Meredith Molloy: 4:00

So I think I think it's a it's an interesting fusion of both. I think as a leader, you do need to define what is the the optimal story to tell and what do those numbers look like. Um, and then gauge, is that realistic? And from there creating what benchmarks make sense. I think when setting the benchmark where it's like, oh, okay, this is like the perfect story, this is the realistic story. And then I think looking at the data that you have and current performance, and it might take two or three iterations of benchmarks to get to the narrative that you really want. And that's okay. I think as a leader, though, what can be really detrimental to morale is if your team and you are at one end of the curve and where you want to be is all the way down at the at the other end. Um, and you put a benchmark that makes your people feel as though they're not performing well. Um, and I think, you know, thinking about metrics like average time to first response, you know, to get to improve a metric like that, it takes time for that spaghetti to stick to the wall. Um really does. Um, and so recognizing that your first response time might be really high at like five minutes, and to say that it needs to get down to 45 seconds, giving that as an initial goal is is a bit much. Um, but recognizing we're okay, we're at five now, and we're gonna implement these two strategies. And by the end of this of this month, let's aim to get it down on average to four. I think it's important to for the story to show um positive movement. Um, and it's not just all about getting to the end point as quickly as possible.

Charlotte Ward: 6:13

To to have gains that are that significant, you're gonna have to change a whole heap of things. And that brings its own stresses, right, to the human beings beyond the numbers, as you were just talking about. So the the baby steps are kind of important in terms of improving trends, I think. Not to baby step, but but you know, enough to be able to measure in a considered way.

Meredith Molloy: 6:37

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 6:40

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