Measuring social media in the contact center Metrics & ROI for social customer care Contributors: 2015 TELUS International Revised 2015
Contents Overview... 3 Metrics for running an effective social media care program... 3 Service Measures... 4 Quality Measures... 5 Effectiveness Measures... 6 Calculating ROI... 8 Calculating Total Cost... 8 Organizational design impacts visibility into labor cost... 9 Technology solves the issue of hidden costs... 10 Calculating the gain from investment... 10 Cost reduction activities... 10 Revenue generation... 11 Conclusion... 12 Key takeaways... 12 About the authors... 12 TELUS International... 12 2015 TELUS International 2
Overview 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. 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. Metrics for running an effective social media 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. 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 for consideration, but in day-to-day operations, most organizations would not want, or be able to track all of them. Part of the challenge in managing a social care program is determining which metrics are important to measure success. With provide guidance to make those decisions easier. 2015 TELUS International 3
Service Measures Companies measure service performance in different ways. Some metrics are associated with demand, such as listening volume. Other metrics 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 Average Handle Time Abandon Rate Listening Volume Relevant Volume Direct Volume Outgoing Volume Proactive Volume The percentage of incoming posts that an agent answers in a pre-defined amount of time Average amount of time agents work on social media responses during a pre-defined interval of time Percentage of posts never responded to or looked at by social team during a pre-defined interval of time Total number of social posts that meet the requirements of the listening platform for a predefined interval of time Total number of relevant social posts that should be responded to by a company for a predefined interval of time Total number of social posts submitted directly on a company s social properties for a predefined interval of time Total number of responses posted by company representatives for a pre-defined interval of time Total number of unsolicited messages sent to social customers from company representatives. This measures outreach activities for a predefined interval of time. SL = (Σ posts responded to within threshold time)/( Σ posts answered) * 100 AHT = Σ (time a post is assigned to agent time to respond) / Σ posts handled during an interval AR = (Σ posts not responded to / RV)* 100 LV= Σ of posts that meet the include and exclude criteria of the listening system for an interval of time RV = LV Σ posts marked as not relevant by agents for an interval of time DV = Σ of posts on company-branded social networks OV = Σ of responses by agents for an 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. 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. 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. 2015 TELUS International 4
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. 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 Social Team KPI Description Calculation First Post Resolution Quality of Response Redirect Rate Transfer Rate Percentage of posts resolved in social media channel on first response Measure of the quality of an agent s written communication Percentage of responses that redirect customers to a private conversation, such as chat or voice Percentage of responses that are transferred to another department FPR = Calculated via a customer survey QoR = Calculated via quality assurance and customer survey 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 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 2015 TELUS International 5
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. 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. 2015 TELUS International 6
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 Social Team KPI Description Calculation 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 Conversion Rate: Revenue Generation The rate that a dissatisfied customer is converted to a satisfied customer through a social care interaction. The rate at which a sale is made because of a social care interaction. Calculations can be made based on customer satisfaction surveys or tracking posts going from negative to positive sentiment. Calculations can be made based on checkout analysis. Brand Evangelist Index (BEI) Loyalty Sentiment Indicator of how likely a customer is to evangelize your brand on social networks. 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. 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. 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. Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Likelihood to Recommend (L2R) are accepted measures of loyalty that can be calculated through a survey. 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. 2015 TELUS International 7
Calculating ROI Before investing in dedicated social media support channels, businesses should ask a vital question what's the ROI of providing social customer service? 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 2015 TELUS International 8
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: Social care centralized within the contact center Social care decentralized outside of the contact center Org design affects social care Combination of centralized & decentralized social care Social care provided by a business process outsourcer (BPO) 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. 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 2015 TELUS International 9
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. 2015 TELUS International 10
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. 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. 2015 TELUS International 11
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, others 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 has rapidly evolved to 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. 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. About the authors TELUS International engaged contact center experts Jim Rainville from Oracle, and Kim Keating from consulting firm, Kenna Inc, to help define and develop contact center metrics for social care programs. TELUS International With locations throughout North America, Central America, Asia and Europe, TELUS International delivers integrated BPO and ITO solutions to some of the world s top brands. Our team members are passionate about sustaining our thriving customer service culture founded upon our value proposition to enable customer experience innovation through spirited teamwork, agile thinking, and a caring culture that puts customers first. Visit telusinternational.com for more information. 2015 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. 2015 TELUS International 12