Sadly, probably not. But a new metric index enables you to capture the full value of your customer/member interactions.
By Rick DeLisi, Lead Research Analyst, Glia
Rick DeLisi has been studying customer service and customer experience for the past two decades. He is the co-author of the groundbreaking book “The Effortless Experience” as well as “Digital Customer Service” with Glia CEO and Co-Founder Dan Michaeli.
As a leader, you likely spend a lot of your time looking at data. And while we’re not suggesting your numbers are incorrect, what we’ve been learning is that the data you’re analyzing isn’t able to fully calculate the true economic value you’re creating for your organization.
Typical Contact Center Metrics
At most banks and credit unions, the typical dashboard includes categories like:
- Average Handle Time
- Service Level (Average Wait Time)
- Customer Satisfaction/NPS
- Schedule Adherence
Yours may include some others, but in general these metrics are designed to convey whether your operation is efficient, and whether you’re providing customers with a good experience. There’s nothing wrong with measuring any of these things, but in reality, they are only tangentially related to what matters most to your CEO and CFO who are responsible for the overall economic success of your organization: value.
What Is Value?
Good question. And when it comes to measuring customer interactions, there’s no one definitive definition. But as we’ve worked with hundreds of financial institutions (banks, credit unions, insurance companies) we’ve seen that the value of interacting with customers online and over the phone comes as a result of 3 criteria:
Efficiency
- Are you minimizing the overall cost of your contact center operation?
- Are you reducing the number of unnecessary live interactions (via phone or online)?
Effectiveness
- Are you maximizing the opportunity to capture revenue in your customer interactions (converting new business, deepening share of wallet among existing customers)?
Experience
- Are you consistently providing the best quality interactions to new and existing customers?
- Are you creating an employee experience that makes it easy for your frontline people to make things easier for your customers?
How Could You Measure All 3 Dimensions of Value Simultaneously?
In the past, these 3 categories of value have been tracked separately, often by different teams or departments. That’s why the Unified Interactions Index was created. It’s a composite of 14 different metrics, spanning the 3 dimensions of value–efficiency, effectiveness and experience–with organizations receiving a total score from 0-100. Companies that score in the top third are classified as Frontrunners, those in the middle third are Pacers, and the remainder are Stragglers.
The Index goes well beyond just customer sentiment or rudimentary efficiency metrics by providing a clear 3-dimensional look at the economic impact of operating a contact center.
How the Index Works
There are multiple ways companies can participate. The simplest and most effortless is via Glia’s self-guided online calculator. Input your results for each of the 14 metrics (you’ll be advised how to score yourself in categories you aren’t currently measuring) and you’ll see where you rank instantly.
A more interactive approach is to invite the Glia team to your location for a Unified Interaction Management workshop with your key leaders. This allows for unfiltered discussion of immediate improvement opportunities in the areas where your performance is lagging.
Apples-to-Apples Benchmarking
The comparisons used in the Index come from analysis of the performance of over 500 other financial institutions (banks, credit unions and insurance companies)–so you will see how you compare to your closest peers. Sure, it’s interesting to do benchmarking comparisons against companies in other industries, but that’s not what your C-suite cares about. The Index is the only resource of its kind that was developed exclusively for use by FIs to see how they stack up against their direct competitors.
What’s In It For You?
Those organizations that have already participated in the Index have reported 3 benefits:
Seeing exactly where you can improve
Nothing is more telling than direct comparisons to others who are dealing with the same challenges and limitations you are. If your results are lagging in any of the 3 categories of value, it will become immediately obvious where you need to focus.
Seeing where you’re even better than you thought you were
Similarly, many have discovered that they are superior in certain areas. That’s important to know as well. Not only should you be getting more credit for your hard work (with metric results you can now show your executives and your team) (did we say, wave in their faces?) but that knowledge will aid in making strategic decisions about future budgeting. There’s not much to be gained by over-investing in areas where you are already measurably superior.
Seeing new things and new ways to measure
Some of the 14 metrics in the Index are standards that most companies have been tracking for years. But there are also some new ones you probably never thought to measure (or thought you could!). Metrics like:
- % of digital interactions vs. phone interactions
- % of customers who accepted a proactive offer to chat
- % of interactions where CoBrowsing was offered
- % of interactions resolved by a bot with no additional human assistance
These assess your organization’s success in adapting to the changing behaviors and expectations of today’s digital-first customers. If you’re not tracking these as closely as CSAT and AHT, you’re likely falling behind your competitors.
The Value of Unification
When a customer interacts with your company–whether online or by phone–those experiences have a massive impact on your financial success. Customer loyalty and lifetime value are essential, as is delivering effortless experiences to your newest (and likely most tech savvy) customers so they never have any reason to consider a competitor. But only by unifying all the different ways customers interact within a single platform–digital, voice and AI–can you fulfill the stated promise of “meeting your customers where they are.”
One of the key steps toward this goal is to unify the way you measure the value you create with these interactions. And since the introduction of the Index, it’s never been easier to do.
