Innovative Customer Service KPIs

An important part of a customer's experience is what they encounter when they want to register their concerns about transit agency services. For example, a customer might want to contact the transit agency because a bus is late, a train station feels unsafe at night, because they feel an employee was rude, or because they can't find something on the website.

Traditional KPIs such as total number of complaints, average wait time, or call abandonment are important, but don't reflect the full experience of those who want to report problems. Moreover, these traditional KPIs focus on just one channel (phone calls) while ignoring the experiences of customers who want to report a problem via email, via your website, via a chatbot, on your app, via social media, or at a public meeting.

When a customer contacts a transit agency to register a concern, they go through multiple stages:

• Figuring out the best way to contact the agency - is it easy to find a phone number, an email address, a form on an app or website, or a place on social media to report the issue? Is the experience the same across all channels and are there times when customers may be better off using a particular channel?

  
  

• Reporting a problem - how much effort does it take to report a problem? How many steps are involved? Does it involve any wait time or lag time? Does the agency's CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system remember your previous complaints across all channels you used to report issues? Is there a feedback loop or auto response that confirms that the agency has received your complaint and tells you what next steps to expect? How quickly does that occur? Does it seem like the transit agency understands the complaint? Do they express empathy for the customer? Is there 24-7 coverage? What happens during off hours, especially for real time problems that get reported?

  
  

• The agency's response - how long does it take to get a substantive response? What portion of responses defend the status quo and what portion commit to taking action to address the issue? What portion of customers feel that the response is reasonable, and what portion continue to ride the system?

Here are three assessments transit customer service leaders can perform to better understand the experience customers have when they report problems:

1. Meet with staff involved with the various problem-reporting channels to ask for ideas on how the problem-reporting and response process can be refined to provide a better experience for staff and for customers.

   
   

2. Each month pull a random sample of say 50 problems reported across all reporting channels to analyze those cases individually, reviewing recordings, logs, written correspondence, etc. to thoroughly examine each original problem reported, the effectiveness of the communications with the complainant, and whether the agency's response was adequate.

   
   

3. Occasionally engage independent researchers to contact a random sample of complainants to ask them about their experiences, focusing on any moments of confusion or disappointment during the process.

These three assessments can guide refinements to the problem-reporting process to make it a better experience. This kind of discovery process can also point agencies towards more innovative Customer Service KPIs such as:

First Contact Resolution - the percent of complaints that are resolved right away in the first interaction with the transit agency.

Submittal Satisfaction - the percent of customers in a random survey who say that they are satisfied with the process for submitting an issue.

Response Time - the average time required to provide a substantive response to a complaint.

Action Ratio - the ratio of responses that take action versus defend the status quo.

Protocol Adherence - the proportion of responses that follow various protocols you may have, such as:

• Listen without interruption.

• Acknowledge feelings and express empathy and regret for the situation.

• Ask clarifying questions.

• Rephrase and repeat back concerns to ensure accuracy and convey that you are listening.

• Let customer know that you will be acting as their advocate on this issue.

• Take ownership and express commitment to resolve the issue.

• Use good judgement to offer solutions where allowed, e.g. a rescue ride, a refund or replacement, a discount, or other suitable fix.

• Set realistic expectations about the timeline to resolve the issue.

• Provide interim updates if the timeline is exceeded.

• Ask customer to recontact us if they experience the problem again.

• Thank the customer for their patience.

Response Satisfaction - the percent of surveyed customers who are satisfied with the agency's response to a reported issue.

Customer Effort Scores - how much effort a customer perceives it takes to report a problem or resolve an issue, based on a random sample survey.

Ridership Impact - metrics to quantify changes in ridership among complainants after they report a problem (note: requires an advanced CRM that ties into ridership data).

Don't be alarmed about subpar ratings. Customer ratings of a complaint process may tend to be low on average because the ratings come from customers who may be upset about a problem they experienced. Nevertheless, customer service leaders can gradually move the needle higher through focused efforts.

Customer service programs can sometimes feel like a dispassionate assembly line - cases get entered in the system, referred to other departments for investigation, then eventually closed out. To get out of that rut, one innovative option can be to redefine the customer service role into a "customer advocate" role. This could involve changing operating procedures and rewriting job descriptions to put more emphasis on going the extra mile to resolve customer concerns whenever possible and conveying higher expectations to other departments who investigate complaints. Customer service staff could even refer to themselves as a "customer advocate" when communicating with customers to reinforce that they are on the customer's side.

One technique used by Trinity Metro in Fort Worth, Texas is having their Customer Support & Solutions representatives later reconnect with customers to find out how their experience has been since they originally submitted their complaint or concern. With this approach, on average 86% of customers say they are satisfied with how things are going. This is a practice other transit agencies may want to emulate.

Also, new technologies, if implemented well, can potentially enhance customer service and KPIs, e.g. AI-powered chat bots or sentiment analysis.

In summary, take a fresh look at the entire process that customers experience when they want to report a problem on your system and make sure you have KPIs that cover all key steps in the process. Reporting problems is a customer experience moment of truth, so transit agency leaders should go beyond superficial KPIs to make sure that they really understand what is going on.