27: Metrics with Vanessa Subramaniam

Charlotte Ward  0:14  

Hello, and welcome to Episode 27 of the customer support leaders podcast. 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 Vanessa Subramaniam. So the topic for this week Vanessa is metrics. Particularly, I’m interested in your philosophies and maybe even what you’re doing operationally right now, in terms of measuring performance, what KPIs you use and why, and whether you measure the team or the service or individuals I’m really interested in your experience and thoughts around metrics.

Vanessa Subramaniam  1:06  

Yeah, of course. I, my approach to support is “data-informed, customer-centric” all the time. And when you’re looking at the customer experience as a whole, these data points that you’re coming up with for your metrics are so important to understanding how well you’re doing for the customer. And right now, I manage the customer support and sales team. So it’s kind of an interesting space, because it’s b2c and we have a revenue target, but we also have an NPS target. And that all falls under my umbrella. When I look at individual agent metrics, I am looking at kind of the traditional stuff call time, how many tasks are you completing? What’s your one contact resolution rate, but I’m also looking at your sales targets and how well are you doing along those lines. I think a lot of the metrics are kind of dependent on each other. So when you’re seeing someone sell a lot, they might have a longer call time. And a lot of it as a manager is me assessing Is this okay? Is it okay for the call time to be seven minutes for someone? Who is not selling a lot? Is it okay for the call time to be 20 minutes for someone who is selling a lot? And for complaints, Is it okay for the number of touchpoints to be five? If you take a whole day to do this, or is it okay for the number of touchpoints to be one if you solve it in one go. So it’s a lot of if then kind of propositions. But the main thing is that you’re measuring it, and you can look at it and you can slice and dice your data because there will be trends that you didn’t forecast would matter. And if you’re collecting the data at least, and you know, in an ideal world You have an incredible business intelligence team who tells you Hey, this is something that’s spiking… 

Charlotte Ward  3:04  

Or a huge spreadsheet, right? 

Vanessa Subramaniam  3:06  

Whatever you whatever it is that you need to work with what you’ve got. Yeah, but I think that’s, it’s so crucial to be measuring everything that you might not know you need. So later on, if it matters, you can go back and understand the trends.

Charlotte Ward  3:23  

Yeah, yeah, you can ask the questions if you’ve got the data. And I think also, you’re absolutely right, that not any one of those metrics operates in isolation everything and affects everything else. So you have to be careful of the questions that you ask of your data. And also understand the influences on it. What whatever that trend or pattern is that you’re spotting. It’s kind of understanding that I’m trying to and I’m trying to ask this question of my data, and what are the what the influences might be on the question that you’re Asking as well as equally important, right?

Vanessa Subramaniam  4:03  

I find that putting a quantitative amount to qualitative data is always very challenging. And once you can somehow get that into the mix, you’re able to do a whole lot more. But yeah, you’re right, Charlotte. It’s all of it together everything interrelated. Revenue impacts NPS and NPS impacts revenue and call time and number of chats, all these things. It all matters in the overall customer experience.

Charlotte Ward  4:35  

How do you make use of that data when it comes to measuring performance? Do you measure performance individually or is it more of a measure of success of the team?

Vanessa Subramaniam  4:48  

Yes, I guess kind of following along, I measure both. I look at both and I talked to the team a lot about both and part of it is educating my team and helping them be customer-centric and data-informed as well. And they need to own their own metrics and understand what good service is based on the numbers that are popping out based on what they’re doing. My goal as a manager whenever I go into a one on one is that they know exactly what I’m about to say, I want to be incredibly boring. I want them to understand that, you know, maybe my NPS numbers for my customers have gone down, and let’s have a conversation about that. I want them to prepare for that conversation so we can get better and improve. And likewise, if their revenue numbers have gone up, I want them to come up with reasons for why that’s happened and all of the other factors that made it driven into that. I think being really transparent with data across your department, and building that culture of us just talking about it helps everyone improve. I’m not trying to build robots. Of course, I want them to you know, care about the customer and do the right thing for them. But Part of it is also self-reflection and it’s easier to self reflect if you know how you’re doing. 

Charlotte Ward  6:05  

Hmm, yeah, yeah. So regularity and high frequency with conversations about data is important. So nobody’s scared to talk about it and nobody surprised by it.

Vanessa Subramaniam  6:16  

Yeah, absolutely. That’s the worst when you get to your annual review is the first time you’ve seen a graph that apparently really matters a lot to your annual raise. So I want them to have access to everything that they need.

Charlotte Ward  6:32  

That’s it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com/27 for the show notes, and I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai