10 Essential Customer Service Goals and Objectives

Here are the specific goals and objectives you should consider to improve your customers' experience and respond to their needs effectively.

Customers are looking for the right brand when purchasing a product or service and they also want to be treated well by that brand. Businesses often get only one shot to convince consumers they should be the chosen brand.

That’s why providing great customer service should be top of mind for your brand. Just as you would do with any other part of your business, though, the first step is knowing what your goals, objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs) are. And when you know the KPIs, you can develop achievable goals for your team.

If you aren’t sure where to start, don’t worry. In this article, we’ll walk you through the steps to put an achievable and attainable plan in place to set customer service goals. We’ll start by discussing the ultimate goal of customer service. We’ll also share key objective examples and explain what the elements of good customer service entail.

What is the ultimate goal of customer service?

The ultimate goal of good customer service is to increase sales and customer loyalty. Beginning interaction with a customer with a friendly demeanor, good communication skills, and a willingness to help and answer customer queries goes a long way toward getting their business.

Even if a mistake is made or there’s a misunderstanding, most customers will be understanding and patient—as long as you and your team are able to address the problem and provide a solution quickly. In fact, doing so may win you more loyalty from customers as a result.

Business-oriented customer service objectives

Exactly what, though, are the best ways to ensure you’re giving your customers quality service? We’ll discuss 10 examples of customer service objectives to consider.

Broad goals are sometimes difficult to assess. Make sure to break the goal down into measurable objectives.

1. Become a brand ambassador

Your team members—from the salesperson to the call or contact center—are your first and most important brand ambassadors. As the most public faces of your organization, they have the job of helping the customer find out how great your products or services are and convincing them to be loyal to your brand. When it comes to building your customer base, if your customer service agents act as advocates (but not pushovers) for the customer, your company can win in the end.

For example, let’s say your company sells meal kit deliveries. When a customer contacts your customer service team with a question about a certain menu, the agent might engage the customer in a conversation by saying what their favorite meals are and giving suggestions based on the consumer’s preferences.

2. Build customer loyalty

It’s much easier to retain existing customers than to attract new ones. There are a lot of ways to build customer loyalty. The fastest way to lose this loyalty, though, is through a bad customer service experience.

No matter where the customer begins to interact with your company—on your website, in person, or through social media—the first interaction needs to show your brand is consistently there to meet customer expectations and serve them. That support and partnership need to continue through every interaction after.

Measuring customer loyalty can be done by tracking how many customers are making regular purchases from your company. You may also consider offering and tracking upgrades or loyalty discounts.

Consider four basic KPIs to measure customer loyalty:

• Customer acquisition rate. This looks at the percentage of new customers acquired in a certain period of time. The formula is:

For example, let’s say your company has acquired 50 new customers in the last quarter and a starting base of 500 customers. Your customer acquisition rate would be 50/500 x 100, which is 10%.

• Customer attrition rate. This measures customers lost over a given period of time. It’s also referred to as “customer churn.” To find this rate, the formula is:

If you know your company has lost 100 customers and your starting base is 1,000, your formula would be 100/1,000 x 100. Your total customer attrition rate is 10%.

• Customer retention rate. This tells you how effective your company is at keeping customers over a period of time. The formula is:

Let’s assume that at the beginning of a one-month period, your company has 500 customers. In that same period, you lose 10 customers but gain 30 new ones. To find your retention rate, you would take ((520-30)/500 x 100, which is 98%.

• Customer wallet share. This measurement looks at the total of a customer’s budget in one category and then at how much of that budget is spent with your company. The formula is:

For example, let’s say a customer spends $1,000 on graphic design services—$300 with your company and the remaining $700 with company B. Your wallet share would be 300/1,000 x 100 = 30%.

3. Be timely and deliver fast solutions

No company can avoid ever having a disappointed customer. When dissatisfaction does occur, though, the best way to make sure that customers stay with you and continue to speak well of your company is to reduce first response time during customer interactions and find a fast solution that meets their needs. That mix will look a little different for everyone, but the idea is to respond to customer complaints as quickly as possible with something they find useful.

A good example of this would be a software company that no longer supports the product a customer is trying to troubleshoot. The customer service representative could take some time to learn about the customer’s needs and then suggest a different product and explain why it would be useful. Another option would be to anticipate this type of need and put automation to work by providing relevant answers through various communication channels.

One way to measure your progress is by looking at average resolution time. To measure, take the total resolution time for all tickets solved and divide it by the total number of solved tickets.

Don’t be sidetracked by looking only at how long the response time took, although that’s an important customer support metric. You should also measure the satisfaction of the customer with the resolution. We’ll discuss ways to do that in a bit.

4. Remove potential causes of customer dissatisfaction

Customer satisfaction improves when consumers encounter fewer problems. If your goal is to remove potential issues, you first have to be able to identify them. That means you need to find ways to stay close to the customer and understand the reality of how they use your products or services. That can help you create improvements with your products that will benefit the customer experience.

A good way to stay close to the customer is to use customer surveys to find out what they like about your product or service and what they might like to see function better. Some companies even have an option for customers to contact them to make suggestions for enhancements, not just complaints about problems.

5. Increase the customer lifetime value

Customer lifetime value is equivalent to the amount of revenue likely to be spent by a customer with your company; this is especially helpful for subscription-based businesses. Excellent customer service can build loyalty and increase that value.

Creating a customer service strategy for increasing lifetime value will start with collecting data from customer feedback, support help, online chats, and any other way customers might interact with your brand and provide feedback.

You can use a simple formula to track overall customer lifetime value. To use it, you’ll need to know the average length of time a customer stays with your company, your churn rate (the number of lost customers divided by the total number of customers at the start of the period times 100), and your gross margin. The formula is: ‍

6. Improve customer retention

This may sound surprising, but when a customer has a problem and contacts customer service, it’s actually a great time to improve your customer retention. Why? Because if you are able to end that interaction with a happy customer, they’re more likely to feel valued and willing to stick with you. They may also share their happiness with others, providing useful word-of-mouth advertising.

A few ways to achieve this turnaround are by having a friendly demeanor, being responsive and empathetic to their needs while maintaining a low average handle time, and providing special initiatives or perks for their troubles. Another way to improve satisfaction with customer service is to involve the customer. In fact, improving your self-help options can go a long way in helping resolve customer issues quickly. Just as a reminder, the formula for customer retention is:‍

7. Enhance productivity

A more productive customer service team means customers’ needs are being met more quickly. Two methods of increasing productivity may be particularly helpful here.

One is by having the right tools for the job, such as templates for customer service reps to fill out or a good customer relationship management (CRM) system that collects data on customers. Both of these can make interactions less time-consuming for your reps at the same time they’re providing a more personal experience for your customer.

A second way to increase productivity is through good training so customer service team members know the ins and outs of a product or service and how to address many potential issues. That way, they can fix more problems during the first contact without having to call on a second-level support representative.

Two KPIs are very valuable to calculate and track when measuring productivity. The first is measuring average resolution time. You do this by taking the total resolution time and dividing it by the number of calls handled each hour or cases resolved in a day. The second metric to consider is the after-call time. In most cases, the call may end, but the rep still needs to inform others, update databases, and more. Measuring after-call time is quite similar to measuring resolution time. Simply take the total time spent after a call and divide it by the number of calls in that time frame.

The second metric to consider is the after-call time. In most cases, the call may end, but the rep still needs to inform others, update databases, and more. Measuring after-call time is quite similar to measuring resolution time. Simply take the total time spent after a call and divide it by the number of calls in that time frame.

8. Enhance rating and reviews

Don’t underestimate the power of word-of-mouth advertising. When you’re providing good customer service, some satisfied customers will provide ratings or reviews for your company.

The better your customer service metrics and ratings, the more likely you are to attract new customers. You should aim to always improve your overall online customer rating. One way to track this is by using a net promoter score (NPS), which requires you to ask your customer on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely they are to recommend you to someone else.

Replies fall into three categories: 10-9 (promoters), 7-8 (passives), and 1-6 (detractors). The formula for NPS, then, is:

It’s important to establish an NPS benchmark. From there, your customer support team will have measurable goals for the next quarter or year. With a specific and time-bound goal in place, you’ll likely see team performance increase.

9. Collect valuable feedback

Many of the objectives we’ve discussed can best be measured by asking the customer. Customer feedback is critical to making improvements not only for addressing customer experience issues but also for enhancing the value of your products or services.

Various ways are useful for following up with customers, including surveys, phone calls, questionnaires, emails, and more. Incorporating more than one method of communication is a valuable best practice. Different people prefer different methods of giving feedback; their reactions and acceptance may be more favorable when they’re offered the right channel to suit their personality and preference.

10. Spot improvements for your products and services

Your customer service department is useful for more than its important role of solving customer issues. Their findings are also a great way to learn what you need to do to improve your products or services. The insights and data your support team can collect through their customer relationships will shine a light on what improvements to make. Having a good system in place to track the types of issues being brought up by customers can help you measure what you’re seeing over and over again.

For example, if you’re a software company, you might want to create general categories for calls, like “running slow,” “software crashes,” and more. Let’s say 40% of your calls fall under software crashes. You could create subcategories to pinpoint where the crashes are happening, which would allow you to see what area of product performance needs to be addressed. With this information, the entire team can become more customer-centric in their approach.‍

What are the key elements of good customer service?

Consider incorporating three things in your plan so your team can be successful when creating effective customer service goals.

A point of contact for customers

Having a limited number of specified points of contact for your customers can help improve customer service. The point of contact might be different depending on where the customer is in your pipeline. For example, customers interested in making purchases might best be served by a salesperson, while customers calling a help desk should be in touch with a customer service professional.

Knowing who the contact is can help reduce miscommunication, set up faster solutions, and increase trust and brand positivity. Those points of contact can improve customer satisfaction by following a couple of tips:

• Use positive language. This is more than just being friendly. It’s finding ways to turn a potentially negative customer experience into something that customers will walk away from feeling heard and happy—with some sort of solution, even if it isn’t the one they initially asked for.
• Be personal and clear. Don’t be too formal in your language. Use names—both for the customer and the point of contact. Use interpersonal skills and be clear to avoid misunderstandings. It’s also a good idea to end the call in a way that shows the customer you care enough to make sure they aren’t left with lingering questions.
• Have the right tools in place. Everything from templates your team can easily fill out to software to increase productivity can help your customer service reps solve issues and keep customers happy. Training your team to have a good knowledge base of your products and services is another tool to have in place.

Problem-solving in real time

Real-time customer support means your team is solving problems when they occur without long wait times before a response. Real-time solutions don’t just apply after a sale has occurred, though.

One benefit of implementing this concept is being able to react to questions while a customer is considering a purchase and reducing the amount of cart abandonment. You’ll also see benefits to your customer service team, as they’ll be able to use their time on more difficult questions. If you’re planning to implement real-time problem-solving, you might consider using live chat, mobile messaging, high-quality self-service options, and chatbot support. Social media may also be useful in solving issues in real-time.

Customer feedback analysis

It isn’t enough to just collect feedback from your customers. You should also take the time to analyze what they’re saying, which can be hard when the feedback involves written or verbal responses.

Try to discover themes instead of going in with preset notions and forcing the comments to align with these categories. You may even need to create a hierarchy within the themes to ensure you capture the customer’s real sentiments. Once you have your analysis, make it visual so your team can see and understand it—and use it to drive improvements. ‍

Need help? Hire an independent customer service representative

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