First call (or contact) resolution. Your company may require that reps resolve a customer’s issue in the first contact, rather than the customer calling back because the initial rep could not help. If that is the case, track how many interactions a rep resolves in the first contact. An example target is to have reps resolve issues in the first call or contact for 90 percent of interactions.

Average resolution time. This time helps measure how efficient reps are with the time they use to interact with customers. An example target for phone interactions is to keep all calls under 10 minutes.

Quality checklist score. This is an internal score that reps receive when the quality assurance team reviews their customer service interactions. As mentioned previously, this checklist should become the standard of quality and be used for assessing the training, coaching sessions, and quality assurance scoring. An example target is a perfect quality score on every customer interaction. Success measurements such as first call (or contact) resolutions and average resolution time emphasize quantity, while customer satisfaction surveys and quality checklists highlight the importance of quality interactions. As for your training program, you want balance—balance measuring both the quality of the interactions to ensure reps meet expectations and the quantity to ensure efficiency and effectiveness.

Conclusion
Reps’ post-training learning doesn’t stop with them preparing for changes in the organization. They need to keep their skills up to date for changes happening outside the organization as well. Customers have already come to expect more ways to get help from your customer service team. As technologies advance, phone and email as a primary means for communication will no longer be enough. More and more, customers expect to be able to connect to reps via text messaging, social media, and—in some cases—video chat. Be aware of how those expectations progress, and prepare reps to expand their hard skills for those new types of interactions. On the flip side, there is a significant transition toward self-service options that enable customers tofind the answers they need independently. Self-service options such as chatbots are ideal for handling simple tasks, but they aren’t great for complex situations. With customers able to handle simple tasks, they will eventually only contact reps for complex concerns. As such, you will need to put greater emphasis on training and developing reps’ soft skills to best prepare them to handle those complex interactions. Emphasizing soft skills means that reps must have the patience to use exceptional communication and listening skills to understand the details of the customers’ concerns. They will need to know how to best use a friendly tone and genuine empathy to help ease even the most distraught customer’s worries. That, in turn, will make for exceptional customer service.