Service
Level Calculation, this is a very black and white calculation which really only
shows the percentage of calls we have answered within a given time, this does
not show me how I am performing at all, I had a recent conversation with my
boss when we failed to answer a call within the 20 seconds we deem acceptable
in our calculation (80% in 20 seconds) and it was the first call of the day, so
our service level hit 0% 1 call 1 failure, this posed the question, would we
care about this one customer so much if we had another 9 calls offered and
answered them within the 20 seconds, giving us a service level of 90%. To be
fair we would have focused on the fact we were are 90% not that we had failed
one call, also this one call may have been answered in 21 seconds, or even 59
seconds it does not matter after the first 20 seconds has lapsed.
So this
customer was failed, but without listening to the call we have no way of
knowing if the customers needs were met, it may well be we answered the call in
21 seconds and gave the customer 100% satisfaction, thus this customer would be
happy when finished the call, so is service level really fit for purpose. We focus
a lot on this and it is used a lot to decide how well we are doing, when really
it tells us very little, in fact it tells me nothing of value.
Is it now
time to look for a new metric or look at use existing data to give us a new
calculation that will give us some real insight into how we are performing,
maybe we need two calculations, one for the customer and one for our finance
department, with a combined one to show how we are really performing.
I am
currently in the process of testing a new metric from the customers point of
view, and I will work on a finance one, once I have some data I will share it
here. If you have looked at this or have any ideas please let me know and together
we may get rid of the pointless service level calculation.
