Contact Center Social Care Metrics Whitepaper March2012

© 2012 TELUS International

Measuring Social Customer Service in the Contact Center

Contact Center Metrics & ROI for Social Care

White Paper

Part of the Best Practices for Social Media Customer Service series by global

contact center provider, TELUS International. Contributors:

Social Customer Care Metrics & ROI White Paper

© 2012 TELUS International 2

Contents

Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 3

The Push to Serve Through Social Channels ................................................................................................. 4

Handling the Magnitude of Support Conversations ..................................................................................... 4

Channel Redirection Makes it Interesting ................................................................................................ 5

Metrics for Running an Effective Social Care Program ................................................................................. 5

1. Service Measures ................................................................................................................................. 6

2. Quality Measures ................................................................................................................................. 8

3. Effectiveness Measures ........................................................................................................................ 9

Calculating ROI ............................................................................................................................................ 11

Calculating Total Cost .............................................................................................................................. 11

Organizational Design Impacts Visibility into Labor Cost ................................................................... 12

Technology Solves the Issue of Hidden Costs ..................................................................................... 13

Calculating the Gain from Investment .................................................................................................... 13

Cost Reduction Activities ........................................................................................................................ 14

Revenue Generation ............................................................................................................................... 14

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 16

Key Takeaways ........................................................................................................................................ 16

About the Authors ...................................................................................................................................... 17

Oracle Corporation ................................................................................................................................. 17

Kenna Inc. ................................................................................................................................................ 17

TELUS International................................................................................................................................. 17



Executive Summary Social customer service is rapidly becoming the new, critical channel to drive satisfaction and loyalty.

Organizations are at different stages of maturity of their social care programs. Some are only listening

to customers via social media using “voice of the customer” information to improve marketing,

products and support. Others are regularly engaging with customers and realizing positive outcomes

including reduced contacts into other support channels. Almost all organizations, however, struggle

with measuring the impact of social customer service on important business metrics.

The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive list of metrics that measure the success of social

media support programs. From this list, you can build a performance management framework tailored

to your company’s desired outcomes. The key performance indicators (KPIs) defined in this paper are

adapted from traditional contact center metrics and fall into three categories:

1. Service measures 2. Quality measures 3. Effectiveness measures

We also tackle the difficult question faced by all service professionals—what is the ROI of social care?

We outline the essential components for measuring ROI, including revenue generation, cost avoidance

and total program costs—once again providing a fundamental framework. Your organization can use

the guidance presented in this paper to create customized metrics for your unique situation.

TELUS International, in partnership with Kenna Inc. and Oracle Corporation, has undertaken this study as

part of its ongoing efforts to be at the forefront of the evolving customer service landscape. As a global

contact center provider, TELUS International recognizes that service organizations are metrics-driven. As

social care moves into the realm of the contact center, TELUS International will continue to invest in

understanding social care best practices to better serve clients.

To summarize, our goal is to provide you with:

1. Well-defined performance metrics for efficiently running a social customer service program

2. The means to calculate ROI

Related research: Benchmarking Social Media Customer Service | best practices for social care This study, in partnership with best-selling social media author Dave Evans, examines the social care best practices of leading high-tech companies. It shows how social care has the potential to lead overall brand perception in addition to customer satisfaction.

Benchmarking Online Chat in the Contact Center | best practices for chat service & sales Sixty in-depth web chat sessions were conducted and a further 150 chat transcripts were reviewed from six Fortune 500 companies to analyze the qualitative metrics of an ideal online chat sales session. The results were scored against three major criteria: agent skills, communications style and chat system features.

http://www.telusinternational.com/social_care_study

http://www.telusinternational.com/chat



Social media is opening a

back door into customer

service, forcing companies to

formalize their approach to

social care.

The Push to Serve Through Social Channels Most customer service organizations feel immense pressure to develop effective social care programs

due to the hype and expected growth of social customer service. However, according to Gartner,

enterprises are just starting to adopt and deploy social care programs:

"In 2010, only 5 percent of organizations took advantage of social/collaborative

customer action to improve service processes; however, customer demand and

heightened business awareness is making this a top issue among customer service

managers," Mr. Kraus said. "At current trajectories, within five years we expect that

community peer-to-peer support projects will supplement or replace Tier 1 contact

center support in more than 40 percent of top 1,000 companies with a contact center."1

Most social media activities still reside in corporate marketing departments

as a means to build brand awareness through Facebook, YouTube or

Twitter. Customer service organizations are being pushed into social care

by savvy customers who are already asking questions on social networks

and expecting responses. These customers are getting faster responses to

their issues through social channels than the traditional contact center

because companies don’t want to appear unresponsive in public forums.

Handling the Magnitude of Support Conversations Once committed to social care, organizations often struggle with handling volume. Dell is a good

example of a company that adopted social media early with continued investment in well-designed

social sites for marketing, product ideation and customer service. Dell has built the infrastructure that

manages 25,000 social conversations per day.2

The magnitude of conversations can seem overwhelming, but in reality, not all social conversations

require a response. Companies depend on robust listening platforms to filter and prioritize relevant

social conversations from inappropriate or extraneous chatter. Technology platforms are evolving with

the ability to automatically score posts based on relevance, urgency and influence. As a result,

conversations requiring immediate attention are prioritized, and no time is wasted manually sifting

through hundreds of posts to find hot issues.

1 Pettey, Christy. “Gartner Says the Use of Social CRM for Customer Service Will Grow Rapidly Over the Next Two Years.” Gartner. 3/3/11. http://bit.ly/e1wHhk. Accessed 12/19/11. 2 Shaughnessy, Haydn. “Dell Social Business Strategy - The Secret Sauce.” Forbes. 12/01/2011. http://onforb.es/s4mj9l. Accessed 1/13/12.

http://bit.ly/e1wHhk

http://onforb.es/s4mj9l



Channel Redirection Makes it Interesting

Ideally, customer questions are addressed in the social channel of

origin. A dilemma arises when customer issues are too complex or

sensitive to solve in the channel of original contact. In these

situations, agents should request to move the conversation to a

more secure or private channel, such as chat or voice. We call this

“channel redirection” and it does have its benefits: customers get

quicker resolution to their complex problems, while companies

route customers to agents with the right skills. It’s still a win for

both sides.

However, channel redirection presents a whole new set of issues

with collecting metrics. How do you accurately measure

performance when conversations are bouncing around a multi-

channel support environment? Additionally, if companies allow

agents to up-sell and cross-sell, then how do you track revenue

associated with social care? How do you measure customer

satisfaction when agents from different channels are involved?

Fortunately, technology plays a key role in solving these issues. Many popular social care solutions are

available to extract, analyze and present performance data—but it’s still early. Our next white paper will

compare the features and benefits of these solutions.

Metrics for Running an Effective Social Care Program The purpose of an effective metrics framework is to ensure that the social care program is achieving its

business goals and objectives. Metrics should also ensure personnel are achieving their potential and

that operations are efficient. Traditional social media metrics, such as “likes” and “followers,” are good

for measuring top-of-the-funnel activities but will not necessarily correlate to a successful social care

program grounded in business goals.

Since social care is a new contact channel in a multi-channel service strategy, the key performance

indicators should complement established contact center metrics. In this section, we divide social care

metrics into three categories that intuitively integrate with a service dashboard:

1. Service measures

2. Quality measures

3. Effectiveness measures

We provide an extensive list of metrics, but in day-to-day operations, most organizations would not

want, or be able to track all of them. Part of the challenge in launching a social care program is

As companies expand customer

service channels to include social

care, they are finding that metrics

are difficult to track as

conversations bounce between

channels.

A robust technology solution is

critical to managing, measuring

and reporting in a multi-channel

environment.

TELUS International’s next white

paper will compare the features

and benefits of popular social care

solutions to help companies make

tradeoffs in their technology

decisions.



Companies should define

their interval of time for

measuring service metrics.

It’s common to use one day

as the interval for social care,

with the goal of moving to

hourly and then half-hour

intervals.

determining which metrics are important to measure success. With the guidance presented here,

making those decisions becomes easier.

1. Service Measures

Companies measure service performance in many different ways. Some metrics are associated with

demand, such as listening volume. Others are related to the speed of response, such as service level.

Table 1 shows a summary of KPIs we recommend for social care.

Table 1: Service Measures

Social Team KPI Description Calculation

Service Level The percentage of incoming posts that an agent answers in a pre-defined amount of time

SL = (Σ posts responded to within threshold time)/( Σ posts answered) * 100

Average Handle Time Average amount of time agents work on social media responses during a pre-defined interval of time

AHT = Σ (time a post is assigned to agent – time to respond) / Σ posts handled during an interval

Abandon Rate Percentage of posts never responded to or looked at by social team during a pre-defined interval of time

AR = (Σ posts not responded to / RV)* 100

Listening Volume Total number of social posts that meet the requirements of the listening platform for a pre-defined interval of time

LV= Σ of posts that meet the include and exclude criteria of the listening system for an interval of time

Relevant Volume

Total number of relevant social posts that should be responded to by a company for a pre-defined interval of time

RV = LV – Σ posts marked as not relevant by agents for an interval of time

Direct Volume Total number of social posts submitted directly on a company’s social properties for a pre-defined interval of time

DV = Σ of posts on company-branded social networks

Outgoing Volume Total number of responses posted by company representatives for a pre-defined interval of time

OV = Σ of responses by agents for an interval of time

Proactive Volume Total number of unsolicited messages sent to social customers from company representatives. This measures outreach activities for a pre-defined interval of time.

PV = Σ of proactive messages sent by agents for an interval of time

Service Level (SL), Average Handle Time (AHT) and Abandon Rate (AR)

measure the efficiency of the social care channel. As a fundamental metric of

all contact centers, SL measures the percentage of posts answered by agents

in a defined threshold of time. An industry best practice is to measure SL

every half-hour and report it as a weighted average over the day. Given the

difficulty of measuring SL for social care, many programs measure it on a

daily basis.

AHT measures the amount of time it takes an agent to respond to a post

from the time it is assigned to when the response is published.



AR is the percentage of relevant social media posts that are not answered in a given time period. This

happens when the Relevant Volume is too high for the agents to handle, such as when there’s a spike in

social activity due to product issues or macro-events. If a customer’s post goes unanswered for a set

period of time, it may be deemed “stale” and left without a response. This reinforces the importance of

prioritizing customer messages to address urgent issues first.

Listening Volume (LV), Relevant Volume (RV) and Direct Volume (DV) are different measures of

demand. LV measures the number of relevant posts found by the listening platform based on the

“include” and “exclude” criteria. Many of these posts will be further filtered as non-relevant by agents.

RV is LV less those posts marked by agents as not needing a response. This can occur when a customer

issue is already solved by another person or the post met the listening platform criteria but didn’t really

pose a question. DV is the total number of customer posts that are submitted directly on a company’s

social properties. DV shows the demand for company-branded social support services. It’s also helpful

for staffing and identifying trends.

Outgoing Volume (OV) and Proactive Volume (PV) are measures of agent engagement. OV is the total

number of messages published by agents in a particular period of time, while PV measures the number

of unsolicited messages published in a period of time. PV usually includes “tips and tricks” and other

helpful how-to information that builds relationships and drives customer loyalty.

There are many other traditional contact center metrics that measure agent and overall contact center

productivity. One example is Agent Occupancy, which is the percentage of logged-in time used for

researching customer issues and responding to social posts compared with available time. Even though

we only listed metrics specific to social care in Table 1, supervisors should continue to use these

operational metrics to manage queues efficiently. Additionally, if social care is outsourced to a contact

center provider, the business process outsourcer (BPO) will most likely track and report on additional

KPIs, including schedule adherence, scheduled efficiency and staff shrinkage for the contact center as a

whole as well as for the social care queues.



2. Quality Measures

Quality metrics are highly valuable but usually difficult to measure. They often require a survey or a

manager’s judgment. Calculating this critical information requires both quantitative and qualitative

approaches. Table 2 lists the most important quality measures for social care.

Table 2: Quality Measures


First Post Resolution Percentage of posts resolved in social media channel on first response

FPR = Calculated via a customer survey

Quality of Response Measure of the quality of an agent’s written communication

QoR = Calculated via quality assurance and customer survey

Redirect Rate Percentage of responses that redirect customers to a private conversation, such as chat or voice

RDR = Should be calculated automatically via social care technology platform metrics; if not, then calculated by comparing the incoming channel vs. outgoing channel for all posts during an interval

Transfer Rate Percentage of responses that are transferred to another department

TR = Should be calculated automatically via social care technology platform metrics; if not, then calculated by measuring the incoming department where a post is assigned vs. outgoing department where a post is answered

Some of these metrics measure the rate of customer resolution, while others measure the quality of

agent response. These KPIs tell management how well social interactions are handled as a whole. Just

like in the chat channel, social care depends on clear, on-point written communication. Agents must be

competent to write concise answers on a broad range of customer issues.

First Post Resolution (FPR) is adapted from first call resolution (FCR), and is the leading indicator of

customer satisfaction. It measures whether customer issues are resolved on first contact. For social care

channels, this metric may be lower in different social networks. For example, it’s very difficult to solve

complex problems over microblogs, like Twitter, due to the character limit. This is why agents often

redirect Twitter customers to Twitter’s Direct Message (DM) function. That way, agents and customers

can have longer conversations that emulate the chat channel. Facebook doesn’t have the same

character limitation as Twitter, but it wouldn’t be efficient for an agent to post a lengthy, detailed

and/or complex response. Facebook has its own set of norms that make brief, on-point communication

essential as well.

Quality of Response (QoR) is similar to quality assurance scores in the contact center. Agents are often

evaluated on qualitative measures, including general writing style and communications skills, product

and service knowledge, completeness of customer resolution, and adherence to defined procedures and

policies. Quality management is as important to social care as it is to other contact channels.



Channel Redirect Rate (RDR) measures the number of times social care agents publically invite

customers to communicate on a private, and in some ways premium, channel such as chat or voice.

Often, better customer service can be delivered during one-to-one interactions, and redirection shows

the social community that companies are listening and willing to help.

Transfer Rate (TR) is the number of customer issues that are transferred to departments outside of

customer service for resolution. Examples include transferring a customer to the sales department for a

new purchase or transferring a social post to a subject matter expert in the product group. Historically,

high transfer rates indicated problems, particularly in the voice channel. This was usually due to

incorrect routing or poor IVR design. TR percentages should be monitored for social channels to

optimize operations. A high TR may be acceptable if a company wants to empower a large portion of its

workforce to get social conversations to the right employees.

3. Effectiveness Measures

When it comes to our final category, tracking social care effectiveness metrics is important for several

reasons:

Understanding economic impact. With social media’s prevalence, it is extremely important to

track its economic impact on your brand. Metrics such as reach, loyalty and conversion rate help

measure how much more revenue is gained through social care interactions and how much

brand equity is built through positive interactions.

Filtering and prioritizing posts for agents. With a limited number of contact center resources it

becomes increasingly important to determine which posts require a response. Effectiveness

metrics such as influence, brand evangelist index and recency can help prioritize posts. For

instance, a new post from a recognized brand evangelist with ten thousand followers should

receive priority over an older post from someone with only a few followers.

Routing the right post to the right agent. In most contact centers, agents are assigned to

queues by skill sets. One group may specialize in complaints and another group may specialize in

converting sales. Sentiment analysis, or keyword filtering, helps determine which posts needs to

be routed to which group.



Table 3: Effectiveness Measures


Reach

Aggregate number of people who can possibly read agent responses for a pre-defined interval of time. Adding up the potential audience does not mean that the entire audience will see every message, but it can serve as a proxy for the number of direct impressions that can be made.

Reach is quantified by summing the number of people who are subscribed, following, friended, etc. on the social channels where agents are posting messages.

Potential Influence Aggregate number of people who are connected to the Reach audience, or the sum of the second-level of impressions that could be made if messages are re-published to these audiences. This does not mean that a message will reach the second-level audience but is again used as a way to measure potential impressions.

Potential Influence can be calculated by summing the different influence metrics from each of the social networks. For example, Twitter publishes how many followers a Tweeter has and how often they tweet. Facebook publishes how many friends a given member has. Polling the application programming interfaces (APIs) of the different social networks and summing the connections an audience has provides a measure of potential influence.

Amplification How likely an individual is to retweet or repost. Quantitative score from Twitter and similar services on social networks.

Conversion Rate: Customer Satisfaction

The rate that a dissatisfied customer is converted to a satisfied customer through a social care interaction.

Calculations can be made based on customer satisfaction surveys or tracking posts going from negative to positive sentiment.

Conversion Rate: Revenue Generation

The rate at which a sale is made because of a social care interaction.

Calculations can be made based on checkout analysis.

Brand Evangelist Index (BEI)

Indicator of how likely a customer is to evangelize your brand on social networks.

Historically BEI has been calculated by correlating and summing customer satisfaction surveys. The most satisfied customers are more likely to be brand evangelists. Sentiment analysis is a more efficient way to see who is most positive about your brand.

Loyalty A customer who continually purchases from a company when alternative, comparable products are available from competitors. Loyal customers are often brand advocates and price insensitive.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Likelihood to Recommend (L2R) are accepted measures of loyalty that can be calculated through a survey.

Sentiment The attitude, opinion, emotional state, or intended emotional communication of a social post, which can be used to route the post to the appropriate agent/department for resolution.

Statistical models can be used to calculate a poster’s sentiment. Traditionally sentiment analysis accuracy is low (less than 70%) but by having the agent properly classify the sentiment & feeding that classification back into the statistical model, accuracy will continually improve.



Calculating ROI Before investing in social care, businesses should ask a vital question—what's the ROI of providing social

customer service? Companies must avoid the trap of rushing into social media because it’s the “next big

thing.” Properly calculating ROI influences strategic investment decisions and establishes a baseline for

program expectations.

We’ll use the traditional return on investment formula, but carefully decompose the Gain from

Investment and Total Cost:

Our goal is to help readers compare the performance of investing in social care relative to other

investments in serving customers. ROI is typically expressed as a percentage and is based on returns

over an associated time period, usually one year.

It’s important to note that we’re providing a framework that needs to be adapted for your enterprise.

For example, the impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty is not included in our gains formula, but if

your company can equate revenue to increases in customer satisfaction then it should be included in the

ROI calculation. Also, ask yourself if customers expect your company to respond on social networks. Are

competitors providing social care? Are employees asking to engage on social networks because they are

passionate about social media? These are all important factors.

Calculating Total Cost

The first step in calculating program ROI is to sum up the total cost (TC) of a social care program. Usually

ROI is calculated for a year, and TC often changes year over year, so calculating years one through three

is a common practice. The main components of social care costs are:

1. Labor, including both variable and fixed (customer service representatives, supervisors, business

analysts and subject matter experts)

2. Technology, such as a listening platform and agent-productivity interface (annualize if Software

as a Service-based)

3. Facilities and maintenance

4. Human resources for hiring and training

5. Miscellaneous overhead for consultants, travel and chargebacks from other departments

Labor is usually the single biggest expense in any customer service program. Contact centers carefully

monitor staffing ratios, utilization and other aspects of operations to manage labor costs. As companies



implement social care, four organizational models are emerging that allow different levels of control and

governance. Each has proven to be successful. However, the cost structures for labor vary depending on

the organizational design. It’s also important to note that TC may be more difficult to calculate if a

company has a large social media-trained staff spread throughout the organization. In this case, a

common technology platform is required to track costs effectively. Let’s take a closer look at labor costs.

Organizational Design Impacts Visibility into Labor Cost

Four organizational designs are being adopted by leading companies based on culture, operations and

desired outcomes for social care. They are:

1. Social Care Centralized within the Contact Center

Under this model the contact center manages all aspects of the social care program as just

another customer contact channel, similar to live help (chat) or email. Either dedicated or

blended (responsible for more than one contact channel) agents monitor and respond to

customer issues on social networks. As volume increases, agents are added to support queues.

There’s a direct correlation between volume and costs.

2. Social Care Decentralized outside of the Contact Center

Another approach is to allow a large portion or all employees to interact on the company’s

behalf on social networks. In this scenario there’s often a certification program and a policy on

acceptable communications. Knowledgeable employees who are passionate about social media

support customers as part of their everyday jobs. Several companies, such as Best Buy and

Zappos, have successfully implemented this strategy. In this scenario, a small central team

coordinates the efforts of socially certified employees. A governance team is often responsible

for outlining clear social policies and procedures to manage risk to the business and brand. They

may also be responsible for providing tools to enable content creation.

Social care centralized within the contact

center

Social care decentralized outside of the contact

center

Combination of centralized & decentralized

social care

Social care provided by a business process outsourcer (BPO)

Org design affects social

care



The cost for this approach is the sum of the costs for the governance team, training costs and

any enabling technology. It gets murky when assigning a cost to the active social care activities

that employees are providing. In other words, companies struggle with determining how much

time employees are devoting to social care and the impact that has on their other

responsibilities.

3. Combination of Centralized and Decentralized Social Care

Another approach is to blend centralization and decentralization. In this case, companies have

dedicated teams responsible for providing social care as a primary job function. They also have

subject matter experts who provide social support because they have demonstrated an interest

in social media. Subject matter experts are usually certified and become a valuable resource to

social care agents. In this scenario, the total cost is the sum of labor costs spread across the silos

of customer service, product groups and marketing. Identifying the fully loaded costs can be

difficult without the right technology.

4. Social Care Provided by a Business Process Outsourcer (BPO)

Another scenario is where a BPO provides social care, often in addition to voice, email and chat

support. The BPO simply adds social care as another offering in a multi-channel approach. In this

case, the cost is calculated and contracts are written based on forecasted volumes and cost per

hour (or similar fee structure). In either case, the costs are well-contained within the BPO and

should be relatively easy to track.

Technology Solves the Issue of Hidden Costs

One trend is for companies to have all social care representatives use a common Software as a Service

(SaaS) interface to interact on social networks. These tools support the centralized, decentralized and

hybrid approach, but have the added benefit of being able to provide metrics on all social transactions.

Users login to a platform to handle social interactions from a single interface, which automatically

centralizes information and tracks performance. Essentially, a robust platform solves the problem of

hidden costs when social care representatives are spread throughout an enterprise. This becomes

increasingly important as companies want visibility into performance and financial gains.

Calculating the Gain from Investment

The benefits of a well-run social care program can be extensive, from increases in market share to

operational savings. One of the biggest advantages is that issue resolution changes from a one-to-one

model to a one-to-many model, meaning many people benefit from one informative, well-written

response. As more people rely on the Internet for solutions instead of calling customer service, this

benefit becomes even more significant. Over time, service organizations are likely to see many financial

and operational gains from investing in social care.



For this discussion, we will examine the two most tangible gains: cost reduction and revenue generation.

Cost Reduction Activities

Cost reduction comes in two categories: “hard” cost savings that directly impact the bottom line and

“soft” cost avoidance which is less tangible but equally real and should be properly quantified. Examples

of cost reduction activities are:

Deflecting calls to the contact center as

customers resolve their issues through

social support channels with social

representatives. To calculate, look for

year-over-year declines in the volume of

other channels. It’s important to survey

customers who resolved their issue on

social channels to determine how many

would have contacted the service

department via voice, chat or email if

their issue wasn’t resolved in social

channels.

Preventing future contacts by other customers experiencing similar issues. Since social

communication is public and often permanent, it’s easily searchable by customers who can solve

their own problems without interacting with the service department. Determining the cost

savings of this indirect benefit is much harder to calculate than a direct transaction but can be

estimated by looking at the reduction in utilization of other customer service channels.

Preventing returns through topical and immediate help.

Revenue Generation

Examples of revenue generation activities are:

Converting sales through direct transactions with sales agents. This type of interaction occurs

when an agent directly intervenes while a customer is asking questions on a social venue about

buying a product. Subsequent revenue generation can be measured by matching the agent

interaction with the customer’s purchase.

Converting sales through indirect transactions with a sales agent. These types of transactions

happen as a result of the social community having visibility into direct sales transactions. When

an agent helps one customer to convert a sale many other potential customers see that

transaction and a percentage of those will act on that information. These transactions are more

difficult to capture but can be measured with the help of post-sales surveys.

Sample question from @TELUSsupport post-resolution Twitter survey



Brand Evangelist Index (BEI): When asked, 93% of TELUS Twitter clients say they are likely or very likely to share their experience.

Improving brand equity through proactive

customer service shows customers that a

company is willing to invest in their satisfaction.

When a company is proactive in responding to

complaints and negative comments, customers

notice and brand equity increases. People are

more likely to buy from a brand they trust. This

type of gain is difficult to quantify but can be

measured through overall increases in sales and

improved customer satisfaction.

Since summing the costs and revenue is difficult, it’s important to use all the resources available in the

customer service department to determine what’s truly contributing to the bottom line. Be sure to

carefully review disposition codes for voice and live help chat channels. Are they capturing information

relevant to social care? Examine the design, distribution and analysis of all the various CSAT surveys.

Find time to study social conversations between agents and customers. Are agents using the right

communications style? Are they upholding the corporate voice and tone?

Be sure to review Quality Assurance output to not only coach agents on the right behaviors, but to

identify systemic issues that can be improved through business process re-engineering. Also, consider

conducting one-off quantitative research to determine if social care is reducing the amount of customer

effort required to deal with your company. It’s a lot of work to synthesize all this data, but the output

validates ROI calculations.



Conclusion We’ve adapted familiar contact center measures such as average handle time and transfer rate and

applied them to this new channel. At the same time, many new metrics are unique to measuring the

performance of social media activities, such as reach and sentiment. Calculating these metrics has been

largely manual, but technology is rapidly evolving that will automate processes. In the end, a strong

performance management system and the ability to calculate ROI are essential for business investment

and strategic decision-making.

Key Takeaways

1. While it’s still early for social care, customers are asking support questions on social networks.

Social media has opened a “back door” into customer service, forcing companies to formalize

their approach to social care.

2. Traditional contact center metrics can apply to social media customer service. Determine which

ones are worth tackling in your social care program. Use the guidance presented in this paper

for each key metric category: service measures, quality measures and effectiveness measures.

3. Speaking to executives and getting their buy-in requires discussions based on ROI. Decompose

what it means to calculate ROI for your organization by looking at revenue generation, cost

avoidance and total program costs. Invest in building an ROI framework that can evolve and

improve over time as data becomes available.

4. Fortunately, technology is rapidly evolving to automate many of the calculations presented in

this paper. Keeping a pulse on the vendor landscape for tools and platforms that can scale and

measure social care in the contact center can lead to a significant advantage.

TELUS International is dedicated to exploring these important customer service topics and will be

releasing a follow-up white paper analyzing the features and benefits of leading SaaS-based social care

platforms. Request more information at: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



About the Authors TELUS International engaged contact center experts Jim Rainville and Kim Keating to develop contact

center metrics for social care programs.

Oracle Corporation

Jim is a Principal Sales Engineer at Oracle working on the LiveHelp product line. He has been a driving

force in developing a proof of concept product that merges social network listening with traditional

contact center channels such as Click to Call and Click to Chat. Oracle engineers hardware and software

to integrate in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL),

visit http://www.oracle.com/webcommerce or contact Jim Rainville at [email protected].

Kenna Inc.

Kim is the CEO of Kenna Inc. and was the lead consultant on TELUS International’s 2011 study

Benchmarking Social Media Customer Service, along with Dave Evans, best-selling social media author.

Kenna has collaborated with TELUS International on several thought leadership pieces focused on using

chat and social media effectively for customer service. Kenna is dedicated to helping service

organizations achieve excellence through competitively advantaged, multi-channel contact strategies.

For more information, visit kennainc.com or contact Kim Keating at [email protected].

TELUS International

TELUS International is the global arm of TELUS, a leading national telecommunications company in

Canada with over 12 million customer connections. TELUS International delivers contact center and

business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions to some of the world’s largest and most respected brands

in the financial services, telecommunications, consumer electronics and utilities industries. Its multi-

channel programs include voice, email, chat and social media customer care. Connect with us to learn

more about our contact center outsourcing solutions: [email protected]

Connect with us:

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© 2012 TELUS International. Other company and brand, product and service names are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Reproduction without permission is forbidden.

telusinternational.com

[email protected]

@TELUSint

http://www.oracle.com/webcommerce


http://www.telusinternational.com/social_care_study

mailto:kennainc.com



http://www.telusinternational.com/


http://twitter.com/TELUSint

Date post:	21-Apr-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	firman-abraham
View:	42 times
Download:	0 times

Contact Center Social Care Metrics Whitepaper March2012

Documents