What is Customer Service Level? How to define it?
The customer service level (CSL) of a company is the overall level of responsiveness and care that its customers receive. This will vary based on the individuals and the services you offer. For example, if your company gives financial advice, then you will probably want to project a higher level of care than if you sell cosmetics.
That being said, the ideal CSL of any company is one that is consistently available, helpful, and respectful. It is also one that has clearly set expectations and expectations are kept. This will make sure that you are consistently providing the level of care that you are aiming for.
What is customer service level?
Customer service level is also important for building loyalty among your customers. This is because a company that is consistently available and helpful is more likely to retain customers than one that is not.
The more customers you retain, the more business you will bring in. This will also help you reduce your operating expenses. With a low customer service level, you will likely have to spend more money to keep your customers happy.
In a worst case scenario, customers can become so frustrated that they decide to leave your company for another. Consider this when developing your customer service level strategy.
Customer service level is the overall level of responsiveness, care, and helpfulness that you show your customers. This can be broken down into several categories, including:
How to define customer service level?
The customer service level is a target in a business model. It’s the result of the inventory holding cost (h) and the backorder (b) or lost sales. The first one is the opportunity cost of investment in the product.
You get the inventory holding cost by multiplying the cost of the product (c) by the rate of return (r), that gets the period (h).
The second one is the opportunity cost of the demand the company can’t cover. It must consider profit margin, penalty and cost in the negotiation, direct labor costs and unexpected costs. But you need to consider how long is the lead time (T) for the period you are holding inventory.
So, the general formula for CSL is
CSL = b/(b+hT)
What are the customer service expectations?
Customer service expectations are how you set the bar for how your customers should receive their products and services. This have seven different categories, including:
What are the responsibilities?
Customer service responsibilities are how you show that you are meeting your customer service expectations. These include:
– Responding promptly to emails
– Giving accurate information
– Ensuring that all orders are accurate
– Satisfying customers with the quality of work
Conclusion
Customer service level is an important factor to consider when establishing your customer service strategy. It will help you to build loyalty among your customers by showing them that you are available when they need you. This will help to keep them as customers and reduce your operating expenses. Setting expectations and meeting them will also enable you to retain them as customers.
Carol Gameleira
Graduated in Public Relations and post graduated in Marketing by ESPM, Carol possess 7 years of experience in the area of Comunications and Digital Marketing, acting in the Artificial Inteligence and Supply Chain realm since 2020.
Cycle Service Level Versus Fill Rate Service Level – Part Two
Last post, I discussed in some detail the concept of cycle service level and how it works in the retail or a B2C environment. This week, let me take up the case of a business in a B2B environment. Typically, in a B2B environment, the orders are placed in bulk over the phone or the web. The customer typically is another business requiring large amounts of products to feed into their production process. An order is also usually made of multiple line items where the customer asks for multiple products on the same order.
Very often in a B2B environment, there is also a qualification process for the supplier to go through before they can sell the product to the customer. The qualification can be quality and volume related. There is also the idea of a business relationship where the two companies have done business with each other for a long time. There is often room for some negotiation when the order arrives because of pre-existing business relationships. For example, it might be possible to negotiate a later delivery date or split the delivery into two parts, with the first part delivered fairly quickly to keep the customer going and the second part delivered a few days later.
In these cases, the appropriate way of measuring the service level could be based on the idea of fill rate. Fill rate can be defined as: the percent of demand that was fulfilled or straight out of inventory when the customer wanted it. Thus if the customer wanted 1000 units, and the business was able to deliver 800 units immediately, that would be an 80% fill rate. (By contrast, the cycle service level would be 0% on account of the resulting stock out). Variants of these methods include calculating the fill rate based on order line item, quantities, etc.
Businesses that resemble what I have described above should consider using a fill rate based safety stock formula. Similar to the cycle service level formula, this also takes into account demand and lead time variability, but it also incorporates other factors such as lot sizes.
Let us now think back to the example of the retailer described in part one. On all 30 days when the stock out happened, some customer demand was satisfied. In the fill rate method, the service level calculation would give credit for that portion of the demand. However, the cycle service level method would go only by the stock outs and therefore give a 0% score on those days. In most B2B environments, this might be a very severe metric.
In summary, let me describe some general suggestions on when to use which service level. As always, these are very basic rules of thumb and not to replace detailed analysis of your specific data. Also, one rule seldom applies to the entire business. Segmentation of data and using appropriate rules for specific segments is recommended.
- In the absence of continuous review of inventory: Cycle Service Level
- Continuous review + Steady demand items: Fill Rate Service Level
- Continuous review + unsteady or bulky or intermittent demand: Cycle Service Level
Have you experimented with the cycle and the fill rate service level calculations in your business? If so, I am interested in hearing from you.
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CheckMarket Scripting Language (CSL)
CheckMarket offers a powerful scripting language to enhance your surveys and reports called the CheckMarket Scripting Language or CSL for short.
You can use it in your emails, surveys and reports.
Our scripting language gives you tremendous freedom to use variables (placeholders), make calculations, show or hide certain blocks of text and much more. So put on your computational thinking cap and let’s dig in…
Variables
Variables in the scripting language are wrapped with double curly brackets, like this: <
Hierarchy
The variables are hierarchical, so you can navigate through them by using dot notation from top level objects working your way down. Here are some examples:
- Questions in survey: <
> - The text of the 1st question in survey: <
> - Text of the second answer choice in question 1: <
> - …
Where to find
Survey variables: can be found in the ‘variables’ dropdown in the text editor of your questions, emails, notifications, …
Here is a list of survey interface variables.
Report variables: In the ReportBuilder, you can find these variables inside the text editor by using the expand button in the properties pane under ‘Comment’ on the right. Here you’ll find the ‘Variables’ menu:
Where can CSL be used?
CSL can be used almost everywhere. In surveys, reports and emails. You can even use it in the subject line or ‘from’ field or ‘to’ field of emails. And by emails, we mean all emails: invitations, reminders, thank-you emails, and notifications. You just type the CSL code directly in your text. A good way to start is to copy and paste an example and then adjust it to meet your needs.
Operators
Our scripting language, CSL, supports more than just variables. Using special operators you can implement your own logic.
In CSL the operator comes first!
To write 1=1 in CSL is:
The ‘eq’ stands for ‘equals’. behind it we place the two arguments to be checked, separated by a space. All CSL operators work this way!
The ‘eq’ operator expects two arguments. If you need to first do some additional operations, you need to use parentheses to group the arguments like this:
When you have parentheses, the contents inside them are done first. So in this case the ‘add’ is done first and then the result is evaluated by the ‘eq’ operator.
Here is an example using an ‘if’ statement:
In the example above, we check if the custom field called ‘Department’ of the current contact equals ‘HR’. If so, we display a text. If not, nothing is shown.
List of operators
You can use block operators to show/hide content depending on your own logic.
| Operator | Description |
|---|---|
| if | Use the if helper to conditionally display a block. If its argument returns false, null, “”, 0 or [], the block will not be visible. |
| if + else | Specify an else block to be displayed if the first condition is not met. |
| else if | Combine multiple #if blocks using else if. The system will evaluate each ‘if’ in order until it finds one that is true or it reaches the ‘else’. Once one of the ‘if’ blocks is true, the others are ignored even if they are true too. |
| unless | Use the unless helper as the inverse of the if helper. Its content will be displayed if the condition is not met (if the value is either false, null, “”, 0 or []) |
| each | Iterate over a list using the built-in each helper. Inside the block, you can use this to reference the element being iterated over, or immediately use underlying properties. |
| each + else | Together with an each operator, you can optionally provide an else section which will display only when the list is empty. |
| comments | Use a comment block to add an internal remark, or temporarily prevent some CSL from executing. |
Using logical operators you can check and compare variables. These operators are most often used inside block operators like #if or in display logic.
A CSL condition is a statement that is either true or false.
Here is a simple example that will return true:
Translation: The ‘eq’ stands for ‘equals’. In CSL, the operator is always placed first. The other two items are what is being compared so it says ‘1 is equal to 1’. This is true.
Here is an example that will return false:
It says ‘1 is equal to 2’. This is false.
| Operator | Description |
|---|---|
| eq | Returns true if two arguments are equal. |
| ne | Return true if two arguments are not equal. |
| lt | Returns true if the first argument is less than the second. |
| gt | Returns true if the first argument is greater than the second. |
| le | Returns true if the first argument is less than or equal to the second. |
| ge | Returns true if the first argument is greater than or equal to the second. |
| contains | Returns true if the text of the first argument contains the second argument. |
| and | Returns true if all arguments are true. |
| or | Returns true if any of the arguments are true. |
| not | Reverses the result. Returns true if the inner condition is false and false if the inner condition is true. For example check if a respondent is a contact. This will return true, if they are not a contact. |
Use math operators to work with numbers. You can perform calculations or control how numbers are presented.
| Operator | Description |
|---|---|
| add | Add two or more numbers. |
| subtract | Subtract two or more numbers. |
| multiply | Multiply two or more numbers. |
| divide | Divide two or more numbers. |
| average | Average two or more numbers. |
| sqrt | Calculate the square root of a number. |
| pow | Calculate the first argument raised to the power of the second argument. |
| mod | Calculate the remainder after dividing the first argument by the second. |
| abs | Return the absolute value of a number. |
| round | Round a number to the amount of digits specified. If no digits are specified, the number is rounded to 0 digits. |
| floor | Round a number downward to its nearest whole number. |
| ceiling | Round a number upward to the next whole number. |
| random | Generate a random number between the numbers specified. |
| random + exclude | Generate a random number, excluding certain values. You can add as many excluded values as you like. |
| count | Get a count of the number of items in a list/array. |
| k | Format a number to the K notation. |
| dec | Explicitly choose the decimal separator. |
| exp | Returns the constant e = 2.71828… raised to the power of a given number. |
| log | If you pass two arguments, the log operator returns the logarithm of a number to the base you specify. |
If you pass one argument, the log operator returns the natural logarithm of a number.
Use date operators to display or manipulate dates and times.
| Operator | Description |
|---|---|
| currentDate | Return the current date and time in the date format and timezone of the survey owner. |
| .iso | Add to any date to get the date in ISO format. This format is machine readable. Use for prefilling and post-filling. |
| .utc | Add to any date to get the date in ISO 8601 format in the UTC timezone. This format is machine readable. Use when sending a date to a database or API. |
| .date | Add to any date to get only get the date portion of a date excluding the time. |
| .time | Add to any date to get only get the time portion of a date excluding the date. |
| .relative | Add to any date to get the relative date, described in words. |
Tip: use .relative.styled to get the relative date, with the original date as a tooltip.
Some examples of the formats you can use:
Note: the date is always returned in the ISO 8601 format. Use dateFormat if you’d like to render it in a pretty way.
Tip: to show the date in a format that is easier to read, also use a dateFormat operator:
All supported time zones can be found in our list of time zones.
Use text operators to change how text is rendered.
| Operator | Description |
|---|---|
| upperCase | Convert the text to upper case letters. |
| lowerCase | Convert the text to lower case letters. |
| trim | Remove whitespace at the start and end of text. |
| replace | Replace a sequence of characters in a string with another set of characters. This operator accepts three terms: The text to be searched, the text to find, and the replacement text: < |
This operator is case insensitive and will replace all occurrences of the search term.
Place this at the end of a variable to strip the HTML formatting and display everything as plain text
This should be used when using variables in URLs that may contain spaces, slashes or other special characters. Numbers do not need to be url encoded.
For instance, use this operator in a branch to an external URL or in a link placed on the thank-you page. You can also add ‘.urlEncoded’ to the end of a variable. For example:
This should be used when creating JSON, and the text might contain backslashes, double quotes or other special characters. You can also add ‘.jsonEncoded’ to the end of a variable. For example:
This operator generates a 64 character hash using the SHA-256 hashing algorithm.
If you pass multiple values, they will be joined as one string and then hashed. This way, you can add a so-called salt value to make your hashes harder to guess. Combine with post-filling. An example:
You can also use the HMAC SHA256 hashing algorithm. For this, you will need to pass HMAC-SHA256 as the first argument, followed by the text to be hashed and finally the secret key. For example:
Use modals and popovers to display extra information when the respondent clicks a link. Use modals for longer text or images, use popovers for small bits of information or to explain a word.
Note: these operators are only supported in the survey interface and reports.
| Operator | Description |
|---|---|
| icon | Display a small icon. Specify an identifier from Font Awesome. |
| modal | Display a link to open a modal window. |
Adding an icon is also possible.
If your text inside the modal window is long, you can also use the #modal variant:
Note: since there’s no mouse on mobile, it’s activated by clicking.
By default tooltips are displayed above the link. You can override this position by specifying “left” “right” or “bottom”.
Adding an icon is also possible. Add the FontAwesome class of the icon that you want to use as the last parameter.
If your text inside the tooltip is long, you can also use the #tooltip variant:
Add <<#lightbox>> before and <> after the image to make it clickable. When clicked, the image is shown full screen. Optionally add multiple images inside the same lightbox to create a gallery.
You can also show an image inside a lightbox without using an image, but using text instead:
You can also use variables. For instance, if you have a coupon code, in a contact custom field called ‘coupon’, use:
See the following article for more examples and information:
Tooltips, popovers and modal windows
Use custom temporary variables to split big functions into smaller parts. These variables are not stored anywhere, they’re only temporarily available within the same page.
| Operator | Description |
|---|---|
| set | Save a temporary value. You need to specify a name and the value. |
To save a large piece of text, you can also use the #set variant:
You can combine text by passing multiple values like this:
Note: no result is returned at this time. Use the function below to retrieve this variable.
Retrieve a temporary value using the name you specified with the set operator.
Look up information from a contact list as if it was a database and return that information to surveys, notifications, reports.
- Contact list id to search
- Field to search
- Value to search for (case insensitive)
- Field to return
You can optionally specify an extra term “contains” to look for a partial match instead of an exact match. For example, “ACME” would also match “ACME Corporation”.
But it can go further than contacts (people). Think more abstractly and you can lookup anything. For instance, place a list of stores in a contact list and when someone enters their city, you return the address of the location in that city or someone selects their store and the email address of the store manager is placed in the ‘to’ field for a notification of an unhappy customer. Any kind of lookup becomes possible!
You can combine all these operators to create more advanced logic. The most common example, is combining ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘not’. To do that, you really have to think in terms of true or false. Each item is evaluated and then compared using the operators.
This is true. 1 equals 1.
Using and:
This is true. 1 equals 1 and 2 equals 2.
Using or:
This is true. 1 does not equal 1, but 2 does equal 2. ‘or’ is true if any of the terms are true.
Using not:
This is false. 1 does not equals 3 but 2 does equal 2. the ‘not’ reverses the result. Simplified, the code can then be seen as:
The or is true since one of the terms is true, so you get:
‘Not’ makes the true become false:
Examples
You can combine all these operators to create more advanced logic. We have a page with useful snippets of CSL code that you can use in your surveys. They are a great starting off point. Even if you do not find code that does exactly what you want, there is often something there, that you can change slightly to achieve what you want.
Как измерять лояльность: NPS, CSI, CLI и не только
А чтобы управлять лояльностью клиентов, важно научиться ее измерять. Это поможет нам становиться лучше и продавать больше. Как измерить лояльность? Сейчас расскажем.
#1: измерить индекс лояльности NPS
- Спрашиваете, с какой вероятностью по шкале от нуля до десяти клиент порекомендует ваш бренд своим друзьям: 0 — никогда и ни за что, 10 — обязательно, хоть сегодня.
- Полученные ответы делите на три группы, в процентах. Критики — те, кто поставил от 0 до 6. Они вряд ли посоветуют вас кому-то, возможно, даже станут отговаривать. Нейтралы — те, кто поставил 7 или 8. Они вроде довольны, но рекомендовать вас вряд ли будут. Промоутеры — те, кто дал вам 9 и 10 баллов. Вот у них остались самые приятные впечатления от общения с вами, и они действительно будут рекомендовать вас знакомым.
- Вычетаете процент критиков из процента промоутеров — это и будет NPS.
Формула расчета NPS
Если число получилось со знаком плюс, значит, фанатов у вас больше, чем ненавистников. Как вы понимаете, чем эта цифра больше, тем лучше. Отрицательное и нулевое значение говорит о том, что у бренда проблемы и пора что-то с этим делать.
Классический NPS на этом и заканчивается, но есть и расширенный вариант — это когда вы еще спрашиваете, почему клиент поставил именно такую оценку. Он позволяет конкретизировать претензии критиков и определить сильные стороны за счет отзывов промоутеров.
Собрать данные можно по-разному: отправить email-рассылку с анкетой, устроить онлайн-опрос прямо на сайте или в приложении, напрячь call-центр и провести массовый обзвон, заставить робота обзванивать клиентов автоматически.
#2: измерить индекс удовлетворенности CSI
- насколько потребители довольны отдельным товаром;
- насколько они довольны взаимодействием с брендом в целом;
- насколько они довольны взаимодействием с вашими конкурентами;
- насколько довольны разные группы клиентов после взаимодействия с вами — и сравнить эти показатели между собой;
- как изменилось отношение к бренду после проведения маркетинговых кампаний или каких-то других действий —например, после обучения персонала — если измерить CSI до и после.
- Сначала определяют, по каким параметрам будут измерять удовлетворенность продуктом. Их может быть много, и они зависят от специфики бренда: скорость интернета у провайдера, качество печати в книжном издательстве — и так далее.Но за основу можно взять 5P-критерии: Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People — удовлетворенность самим продуктом, ценой, местом, продвижением, людьми. Например, помог ли круглосуточный консультант или вежливо ли поговорил менеджер, который подтверждал заказ по телефону.
- Потом собирают данные с помощью личных опросов CAPI и PAPI, телефонных CATI и онлайн — CAWI. В опросах есть два раздела: в первом выясняют, насколько важен для клиентов каждый из параметров, а во втором — насколько они удовлетворены этими параметрами. Обычно в том и другом случае используют оценку по шкале от 1 до 7, но не обязательно.Иногда в анкету включают дополнительные вопросы, которые подразумевают развернутый ответ (как с NPS, помните?) или позволяют судить об удовлетворенности не отдельным продуктом, а брендом в целом.
Оба индекса, NPS и CSI, можно использовать для оценки b2b и b2c-сегментов. И лучше всего оценивать их в связке: так можно понять, приводит ли удовлетворенность (CSI) к лояльности (NPS).
У нас в стране, как правило, оценка лояльности к бренду ограничивается этими двумя показателями. Но западные маркетологи выделяют еще ряд характеристик, коротко о них.
Repurchase Ratio — коэффициент выкупа
Коэффициент выкупа — это отношения «повторных» клиентов к «разовым». Логика такая: в основе коммерческих отношений лежит покупка, поэтому повторная покупка может служить достоверным подтверждением лояльности клиентов. Важно: мы говорим об одних и тех же продуктах — опять вернемся к провайдеру или b2b-сегменту, который, например, закупает сырье или канцелярию.
Рассчитывают его по-разному. Если бизнес-модель бренда основана на подписке, то есть с клиента каждый месяц (квартал, год) списывается определенная сумма за услуги, — нужно просто разделить число клиентов, продлевающих контракт, на тех, которые прекращают пользоваться услугами после первого цикла.
Для тех, кто работает с транзакциями, нужно учитывать среднее время между первой и второй покупкой постоянных клиентов и стандартное отклонение. В общем, сложно, но есть инструмент для расчета.
Upselling Ratio — коэффициент продаж
Коэффициент продаж похож на коэффициент выкупа — с той только разницей, что речь идет о разных продуктах. Чтобы его рассчитать нужно опять же разделить «повторных» клиентов на «разовых». Этот показатель отражает доверие, которое вы приобретаете благодаря предыдущему опыту ваших клиентов.
Чем больше отличается второй продукт от первого, тем больше лояльность к бренду. Для примера возьмем интернет-магазин одежды и интернет-магазин электроники. У первого клиент может покупать джинсы раз в год, потому что его все устраивает. У второго — сначала купить смартфон, убедиться, что все в порядке, и купить уже ноутбук. Upselling Ratio у второго магазина выше.
Customer Loyalty Index — еще один индекс лояльности
- Какова вероятность того, что вы порекомендуете нас своим друзьям и знакомым?
- Какова вероятность того, что вы купите у нас продукт снова?
- Какова вероятность того, что вы попробуете наши другие продукты и услуги?
Оценивают CLI по шестибалльной шкале, где 1 — «определенно да», а 6 — «определенно нет». Общий CLI — средний балл за три ответа. Считается, что этот индекс охватывает больше аспектов лояльности, а, значит, он более надежный.
Однако у нас в стране его не очень любят, потому что на него, во-первых, уходит больше времени и человеческих ресурсов. Во-вторых, вопрос о надежности все-таки спорный, ведь в результаты каждого опроса закрадывается погрешность, а в случае CLI — это погрешности не от одного, а от трех вопросов.
NPS наоборот
Это, как и NPS, опрос из одного вопроса, но здесь вы спрашиваете клиентов, как сильно они будут скучать по вам, если завтра компания прекратит свое существование. И все та же десятибалльная шкала: от 1 — «не замечу», до 10 — «без вас я не справлюсь».
Опрос измеряет вашу эмоциональную связь с клиентами и ценность ваших УТП. Так если на рынке помимо вас есть еще тысяча компаний, занимающихся тем же самым, клиенты вряд ли потеряют сон из-за вашего исчезновения.
Customer Engagement Numbers — показатели вовлеченности
Многие считают, что сейчас онлайн-показатели вовлеченности играют куда более важную роль, чем NPS и CLI — ведь их легче измерить и повлиять на них, а еще они более тесно связаны с доходом и прибылью.
Главный исполнительный директор и основатель компании Totango, которая занимается привлечением пользователей облачных приложений, Гай Нирпаз, предлагает использовать в первую очередь эти метрики:
Activity Time. Это среднее время, которое клиенты взаимодействуют с вашим сервисом в день, неделю, месяц или год — в зависимости от того, что больше всего подходит для вашего предложения.
Visit Frequency. Показывает, как часто пользователь возвращается к вашему сервису.
Core User Actions. Анализирует, может ли пользователь испытывать основные функции сервиса.
Как видите, измерить лояльность клиента вполне реально. Все способы, о которых мы написали, так или иначе помогают выявить сильные и слабые стороны бренда и подсказывают, куда ему двигаться.