30: Metrics with Simone Secci

Charlotte Ward  0:13  

Welcome to the customer support leaders podcast. This is Episode 30 already. I’m Charlotte Ward. This week is metrics. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. Today, I’d like to welcome back Simone Secci. So Simone, the topic for this week is metrics. What are your favourites 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 stepping position was understanding what a KPI was because I had no idea and so I kind of had to you know, I first You look dumb in front of people just no idea what the KPI was no one explain it to me and then do a little bit of research on my own and then starting to actually get into the matter of data what data is what data-driven really means is sort of like a buzzword at the time what it means to actually like you know, use data to back your decisions both with your team and with other people in the company. 

Charlotte Ward  1:32  

It does take and I wish this wasn’t a journey of discovery for every single leader. 

Simone Secci  1:37  

Yeah 

Charlotte Ward  1:37  

It takes a long time to figure out exactly what a metric means. And therefore, how you accurately measure the very centre you know, the bull’s eye 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, a 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 picture for the team, it will basically just kill the need to have individual metrics. Because if you have both and you can see them, 

Right! That’s a powerful statement. You’ve got the dashboard to beat them all! 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 had them for the whole team in two different dashboards but always what I 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’re, you’re trying to draw conclusions around which areas are sucking most of your agents time effectively with that, that dashboard on.

Simone Secci  3:00  

100 per cent 

Charlotte Ward  3:00  

What are you bucketing for in terms of types of issue is is that requests for enhancements, product issues, how-tos, those kinds of things 

Simone Secci  3:10  

That really depends on the product, obviously, always you’re going to have, you know, you’re going to have product feedback, you’re gonna have some feedback, positive and negative, then you’re going to have product information, you’re going to bug reports. And, you know, this, this 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 any metric, and certainly with that kind of it, it loses meaning. I mean, you once you start looking at a tiny, tiny piece of the action, it’s, there’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

Charlotte Ward  3:53  

I guess I guess it’s 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 a particular expertise that you might not necessarily have spotted, particularly if they’re remote, you know, so it gives you that kind of clarity of the skills that people are building as well, right.

Simone Secci  4:26  

100% I mean, once again, you see somebody performing particularly well in terms of like, CSAT, and then maybe you can couple that with the type of issue 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 weren’t in an escalated support position, maybe they should be, right and, or people that are particularly skilled at writing, like you, you can there’s a lot that you can learn that maybe you, you know, you haven’t learned By just reading tickets that they work on. Yeah, in that sense and also yeah analysing. I do a lot of like issue analysis so trends over time with specific issues or specific buckets or we’re tracking outages for example, the other side external side is presenting a story to people that are outside support, presenting the core, the, the, the right story, and and within the terms that you deem appropriate because you get one chance to, you know, to advocate for yourself in terms of accomplishments and challenges that you’re facing.

Charlotte Ward  5:46  

I think that’s really key and it’s one of my favourite topics is that the metric is a standalone however pinpoint accurate you make it the metric as a standalone entity is fairly meaningless. It’s the story that you’re trying to tell with it that actually is as important to you as a leader, I think as it is to the wider business. 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/30, for the show notes, and I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai