As any customer service manager knows, tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is key to improving agent performance. However, while most managers are familiar with tracking and analyzing agent performance over channels like phone calls, emails, and web chat, tracking and analyzing SMS customer service is a little bit different.
While a text service for business does empower managers to track some familiar KPIs, choosing and analyzing these KPIs can take some adjusting. For example, with text message customer service, there are fewer recognized industry-wide benchmarks for KPIs like response time, which means that businesses have to set their own—a challenge, to say the least.
To help you create the business SMS KPIs that will work for your team, we created these step-by-step instructions.
Choosing Your SMS Customer Service Goals
Customer service teams often have one main goal—customer satisfaction. However, there are many smaller goals that, when achieved, can lead to improved customer satisfaction; that’s why it’s important to choose more than just one large goal when deciding what to measure.
When choosing your SMS customer service goals, start by keeping them general and qualitative—specifics and numbers will come in a subsequent step, when you choose your KPIs. Some common SMS customer service goals include:
- High customer satisfaction
- Fast service
- A large number of customers returning for SMS support over other channels
- Efficient team operations
Once you have chosen one or more goals for your SMS customer service team, you can start thinking about defining the KPIs.
Choosing Your SMS Customer Service KPIs
Choosing your SMS customer service key performance indicators (KPIs) might feel as familiar as choosing your initial goals. Text message customer service platforms empower businesses to track common KPIs like first response times, average response times, and resolution speed. Mapping your KPIs to your goals can feel like a familiar task, too.
Common SMS Customer Service Goals Mapped To KPIs
| Goal | KPIs |
| High customer satisfaction | Net promoter scores (NPS) SMS list unsubscription rates |
| Fast service | Resolution speed (how long chats are open before they are closed by agents) Agent response speed |
| Efficient team operations | Number of chats per team Average response times Resolution speeds |
As soon as you decide which metrics to track, you can figure out how to track them.
Track Your SMS Customer Service KPIs
Most cloud-based apps have built-in analytics capabilities, and you’ll find that SMS customer service platforms are no different. Top SMS customer service platforms can track all of the previously mentioned KPIs and more. 
First and foremost, you need to ensure that the SMS customer service platform you choose allows you to track common KPIs. But if it does that, you also need to ensure it provides analytics in an illustrated, easy-to-review format. You should also be able to export analytics in order to combine and compare them with the data from your other customer service platforms.
SMS customer service platforms are important for a variety of reasons, but they are a vital component when it comes to performance measurement. Without them, it is nearly impossible to accurately track critical KPIs like response time. While receiving performance feedback through surveys is possible without the help of an SMS customer service platform, relying on customer feedback alone is not advisable way to make significant improvements.
Compare Your SMS Customer Service Results
SMS customer service has fewer industry-wide benchmarks, so you’ll need to partially make your own. This can seem like an intimidating task, but really, it’s simple—and more effective than cookie-cutter benchmarks.
It is imperative that you do not choose estimated benchmark based on numbers that seem impressive. Sure, a 10-second response time sounds great, but is it realistic? How do you know? What do you have to compare that number to?
The best way to create your text message customer service benchmarks is to conduct an initial measurement of the KPI (or KPIs) for the communications channel that SMS will be replacing or helping. Compare those KPIs to your business SMS KPIs. Over time, you’ll spot trends and learn which KPIs to focus on.
For example, if your goal is to provide speedy customer service, you can measure first response times for your new SMS customer service, then compare it to your response times for web chat. If one is significantly faster than the other, you’ll know where your teams need to improve.
Ready to start improving your customer service performance? Try our text service for business.
