I have the best job in the world. I get to do what I truly love which is help clients improve their social customer service programs. I've been fortunate to be in this small but growing niche for almost 5 years now after spending 9 years helping some of the largest global contact centers provide a world-class customer experience to their customers. After all these years the questions I get asked most are very similar across all the industries I'm fortunate to work in.

How do I measure the value of social care?

What metrics and KPI's should I track?

What is the ROI of social care?

These questions of course are answered by the reporting you have in place to analyze and optimize social customer service performance. I thought you might find it helpful if I shared a quick list based on my experience on the reports I found most valuable. I'm sure I've missed many that you are using today, please share them in the comments section so others can learn from what is working for you!

Enjoy.

#1 - Inbound Volume by Day

Response time is a critical metric and the best way to reduce it is to make sure you are staffed when your customers are posting to social networks. I had a client whose volume only went down 20% on the weekend but was only staffing Monday through Friday. They used an inbound volume report by day to secure investment for weekend resources.

#2 - Inbound Volume by Hour

Similar to the report above, it's also important to know when during the day customers are posting. Again, to optimize response time, agents should be staffed to mimic the highest volume periods of the day. A previous client staffed 8-5pm EST, but after analyzing inbound volume by hour realized 5-10pm EST was the highest volume posting time. This actionable data gave them the proof they needed to create a second shift of agents and stagger them across the day to reduce response time.

#3 - Response Time

At first glance this metric seems straightforward. Simply, how long does it take to respond to customers posting in social media? However, most clients don't want the time they aren't monitoring social sites to count against them. (i.e. If a customer posts at 5pm on Friday and a response is sent 10am Monday, the response time is only a few hours, not a few days since there is no weekend coverage).

There is only one metric for response time, that is customer time.

The customer doesn't care when you monitor or not, it does not improve your service to play games with the numbers. The second complexity is that many social posts require multiple back and forth engagements before the case is closed, so is response time from the first engagement or when the case is closed? I'd argue its important to report on both, so see #4.

#4 - Case Close Time

With Response Time we learned its critical to track how long it takes to provide that initial response to a customer's social media post. Case Close Time tracks the total time it takes to close a post or case. It's ok to follow-up and have some back and forth with a customer to resolve their issue, but it doesn't do any good to respond quickly on the first engagement only to frustrate the customer because it takes a day or two to ultimately close out their case.

#5 - Customer Satisfaction or Net Promoter Score

For Twitter I recommend sending a follow-up tweet immediately after closing out a social post that says, "On a scale of 0-10, 10 being very likely, how likely are you to recommend our social customer service?" If you have cell numbers for your customers and have the ability to send short text/SMS surveys, that is a good option as well (i.e. Rate your social customer service experience 1-5 by texting 1-5 to 12345). AT&T is using this method.

#6 - Total Volume Trended Over Time

It's not atypical to see social care volume growth rates increasing 50% a year as more and more customers adopt social as a support channel. With growth rates that significant, it requires contact center managers to constantly evaluate their staffing and hiring approach. Perhaps traditional channels like email and phone are decreasing over time and that pool of agents can be allocated to the social channel.

#7 - Likes, Shares, Favorites, Retweets

These metrics are typically used by social marketers to measure the success of social content published on Facebook and Twitter. However, they are also great service metrics to show the value of responses coming directly from social customer service agents. If customers appreciate your responses and see them as helpful they will positively share it with a like or RT.

#8 - Top Issues, Questions, Praise

The most successful contact centers have always taken the goldmine of feedback from the voice of the customer and shared that actionable data back across the enterprise so products and services can be improved. Social is no different and is probably even more critical because social word of mouth is so much more powerful than the phone, email, and chat channels.

For example, every month product management should be receiving reports on the top 10 complaints, questions, and praise customers have posted on social networks. Trending these metrics over time, comparing them to previous time periods, and showing percent change are also elements to be considered for these type of reports.

#9 - Open Case Visibility

When cases are open, that means a customer is waiting. It's critical to have a report view into how many open cases, case age, agent assigned, and type of case to make sure open case volume is proactively managed.

#10 - Volume by Social Site

It's important to break down inbound volume by Twitter, Facebook, Google +, etc. Typically agents are assigned to queues or sites so understanding the volume can help align the right coverage for each social channel.

#11 - Reporting by Tags/Labels

Especially with Twitter and its 140 characters, it can be tough to get enough actionable data from a tweet to share with the rest of the organization. However, most social listening and contact tools provide the ability to add tags or additional labels to social interactions which you can then report on. For example, adding specific product or brand names, location info if you are a retailer or restaurant, or perhaps a severity level to understand the frequency of high priority issues to posts can be extremely valuable.

#12 - Reporting by Influencers

All customers deserve your best service, however, we can't ignore the impact of influencers in social media. Because of that, it is important to be able to filter almost all of the above reports by posts from influencers. Top complaints from influencers, response time for influencers, open cases by influencers, and NPS/CSAT by influencers are all valuable in looking at how your social care is impacted by Klout scores and follower counts.

#13 - Cross-Channel Reporting

Social is just one piece of the overall customer support experience. Although rapidly growing, for most companies social is still less than 5% of overall support volume compared to phone and email. However, leading contact centers are integrating social into their CRM tool so they can report on not just social metrics but also cross-channel key performance indicators. For example, top issues by channel, cost per contact per channel, CSAT by channel, and agent productivity by channel are all key performance indicators to track. To be clear, by channel I mean phone, email, chat, self-service, communities, and social.

#14 - Engagement Rate

In my experience clients can get too wrapped up in reviewing social posts and deciding if it's technically a support post or if a post requires any action. The bottom line is the customer took the time to post something on one of your social properties, don't they deserve a response? Isn't friendly engagement one of the ways you build a better community and a stronger presence on Facebook and Twitter? I think so and that is why I think it's important to measure the total amount of posts you receive and divide it by the total number of engagements or responses to get your engagement rate. This is especially important for Twitter handles dedicated to support.

#15 - Social Profiles Captured

One of the single toughest challenges facing the social customer service community is understanding if @ChadSchaeffer on Twitter is the Chad Schaeffer in Plymouth, MI with a phone number and email address in a CRM database. Linking social id's with traditional customer info is required for the 360 degree view of the customer so many marketers and service professionals aspire to obtain. Consequently, measuring how many social profiles are being added and combined in your CRM system is a new metric I think leading professionals will begin to track and communicate.

#16 - Social Resolution Rate

A new personal favorite of mine is measuring the rate you are able to resolve a customer's issue within the social media channel. Too many times I'm seeing brands respond with "call us at 1-800 or email us by clicking this link". If customers wanted to use the phone or email to contact you, they would have chosen those channels in the first place. I also don't buy the all-too-convenient response of 'we don't want to discuss issues over social', private messaging is available in both Twitter and Facebook to conveniently resolve customer issues more discretely. Fundamentally, customers are choosing social support channels because they require less effort than filling out a long email form or waiting on hold and fumbling through an IVR.

#17 - Productivity

The reason I saved productivity for last is because it's the least important social care metric. I think the industry is learning over time that quality is always better than speed when it comes to measuring customer satisfaction. Zappos has publicly stated they don't even measure handle time anymore for any service channel. Average time on case and average cases closed per day by agent should only be used as a coaching tool or directional guide. You might even find the agents with higher handle times also have higher CSAT or NPS scores!