A few weeks ago I posted a blog with the title: Why keep chasing the wrong Goose? At the end of that post I promised to come back to you with a more in depth post on what you should be chasing, or in other words: Which metrics should you put in place in the Customer Services environment to get “it” right?

I truly believe our “profession” is in need of a new dashboard. Current metrics have brought our customers and our companies too little. Most of the times when a company gets bad press it is about the bad service that has been provided through customer services. The existence of TV-watch-dog shows depends on this, and the number of shows is only increasing. Thus: we need to re-invent ourselves. We need to re-invent the way we do, act, live, breath and measure (the value contribution to the customer and the company of) Customer Services.

When reading lot’s of research on the link between the Customer Service Experience and Customer Loyalty, stuff on metrics like the ACSI, Customer Effort Score, NPS, ways to ask questions in customer surveys and discussing the theme on Twitter and other blog-posts, it quite dazzled me, so I let it rest for a while.

This week I came to think: why not use the power of Social Media to co-create, through collaboration, the new Customer Services Dashboard 2.0? Together we know more, we can discuss viewpoints and we can leverage experiences. I hope you share my thoughts and are willing to contribute.

A short introduction:

Before we can build the new Customer Services Dashboard 2.0 we need to have a goal (we do not measure because we want to measure, we measure because we want to improve something).

I would like to think that the main goal any Customer Services department should have, is to contribute to the company’s goal. Since I do not know all company’s goals I propose that we set as our goal:

• Improvement of Customer Loyalty (Behavior)

Customer Loyalty behavior consists of three specific “actions” that companies aim for to boost sales and profits. These three are:

• Buy again (i.e. extend a contract or repurchase the same product when used)
• Buy more (i.e. buy additional products or services from the company)
• Spread the word (i.e. tell friends and family about the great product/service and advice to buy it too)

To make it a little more easy to link this desired customer behavior to Customer Services I suggest you read some of the following:

http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/customer-service-trumps-price/

http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/category/6-laws-of-customer-experience/

http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/customer-experience-correlates-to-loyalty/

http://blog.vovici.com/blog/bid/18229/Customer-Effort-Score-A-Loyalty-Predictor-for-Customer-Service-Interactions

So, I hope you are all warmed-up now. I am!

How will this continue?

First of all I need to know if you are up for the challenge? Do you also believe that our Customer Services Profession is in need of building a Customer Services Dashboard 2.0?

If yes, or no, please leave a comment below and share your views. Are you interested in contributing to build this dashboard, please connect to me through LinkedIn or Twitter, and let me know you’re interested. I’ll get back to you within a couple of days, to let you know how we are going to get this done and how you can contribute (and benefit from joining in).

Looking forward to the collaboration journey. Are your in?