A strong service and support CX program relies on a system of measurement to assess the quality of service delivery to customers, including performance improvement validation, rationale for CX investment, goals for future performance and required remedial actions. Without this information, service and support teams risk wasting time and revenue on actions that may not correct CX performance.

While customer service and support leaders have traditionally focused on measuring customer effort score (CES) to mitigate customer disloyalty, Gartner research shows that value enhancement score (VES) provides service organizations with an opportunity to predict positive customer loyalty outcomes. Value enhancement can only occur if the customer has had a low-effort interaction with the customer service organization. Thus service organizations need to monitor both CES and VES together to ensure that customers remain loyal to their organizations.

Additionally, Gartner does not recommend measuring NPS in customer service and support. Focus should be shifted to other service metrics that provide better actionability.

Gartner research shows that post-transaction surveys are the most common VOC data collection method, with 89% of service leaders reporting use of this method. Service leaders should focus on understanding the digital customer journey, anticipating client needs and behavior, and capturing customer sentiment across a spectrum of poor, mediocre and exceptional experiences throughout channels.

CSS leaders should expand their repertoire of VOC tools to glean a more holistic understanding of the customer experience beyond the selective extremes reported through customer surveys.

Current and future value of VOC rely heavily on the implementation of other direct methods, most notably speech and text analytics. Although only 41% of CSS organizations currently use speech analytics, 79% of leaders believe it will be the most valuable way to collect data in the next five years.

Gartner research finds that customers primarily choose a channel — regardless of whether it is assisted or self-service — based on past service experiences, with perceived speed to resolution and their feeling of which channel is most appropriate for their issue second and third, respectively. Customers’ top reasons for choosing a channel demonstrate they do not necessarily know which channels are better or worse for resolving a particular issue.

The research also shows that customers have just as good — but often better — service experiences in self-service than in assisted channels. On average, self-service outperforms the phone channel in all CX metrics, producing statistically significant differences across CES, CSAT and VES.

Therefore, service leaders must make a concerted effort to guide customers away from the phone channel and toward self-service channels if that is the right channel that leads to a better service experience. Our research shows that guiding customers to the right self-service solutions leads to a significantly better CX. Of the customers who reported they were guided, nearly all (88%) rated their satisfaction with the experience a 6 or 7 out of 7, and only 3% rated it at 1 through 4.