This article was originally published in Top-Tier Support, Front’s Head of Support Kenji Hayward’s LinkedIn newsletter for customer service leaders. For more frontline advice and actionable insights, subscribe today to get them delivered to your inbox every other week.
When I first started at Front in 2018, I reported to sales. Then I reported directly to the co-founder / CEO, then to the VP of Customer Success and Solutions Engineering, before reporting to our Chief Engineering, Product, and Design Officer to this day.
I was curious about how other support teams are structured because based on my own experience, the goals and KPIs vary from one to another. It got me wondering: how do we show support’s value in each of these different setups?
So I ran a LinkedIn poll asking where support sits in your company and 75 of you responded. Here are the results:
A surprising number of you report from operations. I’d love to hear what kind of goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) you track, so please share in the comments.
Across the board, 80% of the metrics stayed the same, but the last 20% differentiated the strategy of each team. Just compare the goals and KPIs I experienced when my team sat in different parts of the org:
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but you can get an idea about the diverse expectations of what support is expected to deliver.
Championing the right KPIs under each new leader
Working in the queue in my early years, I learned that speed and quality trumps all and if you can get that right, you’re ahead of the game. I advocated for shifting the focus from strictly efficiency metrics to more holistic, outcome-based measures, such as influencing customer lifetime value (CLTV), the impact of Customer Effort Score (CES), and setting a high bar for CSAT that’s way above industry standards. I had to clarify that Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn’t the best metric to measure support performance, but rather it’s an evaluation of the entire company. Overall, the idea was to emphasize the customer experience over solely operational efficiency, leading to more sustainable customer loyalty and revenue growth.
There were certain times when I challenged leadership to reconsider how support metrics were being used to measure success. While traditional metrics like First Response Time (FRT) and Average Handle Time (AHT) are important, I realized they weren’t necessarily aligned with what customers valued or drove the outcomes we wanted to see at Front.
To champion support’s value, you’ve got to align your objectives and key results (OKRs) with whom you’re reporting. As a support leader, one of your top priorities should be to get a deep understanding of what success looks like at your company. Find out what the company OKRs are first and see how you can align support’s impact to them.
And yet, the journey that brought me here has been filled with invaluable lessons from every leader I’ve worked with along the way. The way I lead my team today is a culmination of all those experiences. Here are some nuggets of wisdom I’ve gathered from each leader:
“Celebrate support wins and get the company involved.” - Travis Bryant
“What got you here won’t get us there (to the next level). Focus on strategy and outcomes.” - Mathilde Collin
“You’re optimizing for the wrong outcome, and it’s probably because you see support as a cost center. You should be optimizing for customer lifetime value (CLTV) instead.” - Sylvie Woolf Segar
“Data is gold. Support can drive product impact using customer insights.” - Mohammed Attar
Next week, I’m bumping up edition 6 early to take a beat for the Thanksgiving holiday. It’ll detail how I’m championing support’s value with my C-suite today and the steps I take to cascade OKRs to my team — just in time for those who need some inspiration when planning and goal-setting for the new year.
More tools for your support team
Balancing the strengths of your team is an art. Share the support archetype quiz with your team to find out how to work better together.
CSAT tends to be a hotly debated metric these days, as seen in Mercer Smith’s post, Hannah Clark Steiman’s post, and Neal Travis 🌱’s post. We deep dive into the topic of Keeping CSAT meaningful: How to avoid the vanity metric trap, weighing the pros and cons of tracking CSAT while also factoring its evolving role in the age of AI.
Written by Kenji Hayward
Originally Published: 12 November 2024