Service level agreement metrics are the vital signs of your business, and monitoring them is key to its success. Customer service SLA metrics insights can be tapped and analyzed to enhance customer experience and win customer loyalty. Customer support teams must regularly measure the service level metrics to ascertain team performance levels and understand if they are meeting targets. Service level metrics can offer valuable insights into customer support team efficiency, time and steps taken for issue resolution, etc. This blog has compiled the top 18 critical Service level agreement metrics you need to track to maintain a high level of customer support and interaction.

Why are Service level agreement metrics Needed?

A service level agreement indicates the level of service you can expect from a vendor, and a service level agreement (SLA) metrics measure the level of service, including the penalties and remedies imposed if the desired levels are not achieved. Service level agreement KPIs are crucial to any sales or service contract. Typically, SLAs are laid between an external supplier and a company or between departments.

Service level agreement metrics can accurately gauge whether your service provider meets your set standards. Customer support teams can use Service level agreement metrics internally to determine baselines for the number of customers and the level of service.

Without service level agreement measurements, your business will be oblivious to whether it meets customer needs and offers customer support on target. Service level agreement metrics help you precisely track your success.

18 Service level agreement metrics in Customer Service that must be monitored

Modern businesses must track the top 18 Service level agreement metrics mentioned below.

1. Average Response/Wait Time: The average response or wait time metric measures the time your customers are on hold during a call. It accurately measures the time between the customer's call and the agent's response. This a key customer service KPI to evaluate as one-third of customers hang up after one minute of holding, and two-thirds quit after three minutes. Average response time must be studied and improved to present a good first impression of the brand.  
2. First Call Resolution: This metric is a crucial performance metric to track as it denotes the efficiency of the customer service team in resolving the issue after just one call. It indicates the agents' capability to understand and resolve the problem without needing to return or transfer the call.
3. Average Resolution Time: These Service level agreement metrics calculate and record the exact minutes the agents take to solve a customer issue. Typically, standard and special issues are tracked independently as they take different times to solve. If the graph indicates that more time is taken to solve common customer issues, the customer service team can dig deeper for reasons for the same.
4. Average Handle Time: Average handle time measures the average time a customer takes for a call from start to finish. With this metric, you can evaluate the performance of the agent or team and investigate further if any agent is recording a longer call handle time than usual.
5. First Response Time: The First Response Time metric measures the average time taken by a customer to get their first reply. The first response time also depends upon the communication channel and customer expectations. For instance, customers expect an answer to an email within an hour and to a Twitter message in less than an hour.  
6. Cost per Resolutions: This metric measures the cost of solving customer issues. This KPI tracks the costs of issue resolution across different communication channels. Several factors, such as employee wages, software license fees, equipment costs, and agent training, can influence this metric. The cost-per-resolution metric can help you make the most of your available resources and achieve the ideal scenario of low cost and high customer satisfaction rates.
7. Call abandon rate: As the name suggests, this metric monitors the percentage of customers who leave a call before connecting with an agent. This KPI accurately measures the support team's ability to handle requests within the stipulated time. A high call abandon rate means longer waiting time, complicated entry process and unsatisfied customers.  
8. Rate of calls answered: This is a vital SLA metric, as the inability to reach a customer service agent is the leading cause of customer frustration. A high percentage of missed calls indicates many customers have negative experiences. According to a report, one-third of customers will quit business with a company after one bad experience. To reduce this negative customer experience, you must regularly track these metrics and break down missed calls to get more data.
9. First Contact Resolution: These Service level agreement metrics show the percentage of issues the service agents address in the first customer interaction. This metric must be analyzed to ensure happy and content customers regardless of the communication channel. High FCR rates indicate higher customer satisfaction, and it can be achieved by diverting the right call to the right person at the right time.
10. Issue resolution rate: This metric measures the total number of issues your team resolves in a given period. Since customers who do not resolve their issues are not likely to get back, it becomes a priority for customer service teams to maintain this metric at 100%.
11. Average customer interactions: Average customer interactions per ticket measures the number of times a customer contacts the agent for the same issue. This number can be accurately calculated with CRM software and be improved as much as possible.
12. Top customer support agent: Evaluating your agents' progress is crucial to understand their productivity and efficiency. This can be achieved by metrics such as number of calls handled, first call resolution rate, and customer feedback on the quality of support provided.
13. Number of Issues: To understand future staffing needs, you will need to measure the volume of calls, requests, and issues the customer service team receives over time. This metric helps you plan better, especially during rush periods when the team may be overwhelmed with the call volume, resulting in angry customers and stressed agents. By monitoring this metric, you can assign the right number of agents to the right communication channel at the right time.      
14. Total issues and solved Issues: If you know the number of total tickets against the solved tickets, you can understand your customer support's efficiency. If you are getting more issues than your team can handle, then it is time for you to dig deeper into the causes, such as whether the staff need more training, whether you need to hire more staff, and so on.
15. Customer retention rate: Customer loyalty is the ultimate measure of the success of good customer service for any business. This is a key metric, as it is common knowledge that it is more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. By improving this SLA metric API, you can reduce costs or re-assign agents to different channels based on popularity. This metric has no specific desired value as it depends upon the industry and business model.
16. Customer Satisfaction: Score The most important Service level agreement metrics every organization aims to achieve is a satisfied customer. It is important to track this KPI as you may be unaware of some problems your customer may be repeatedly facing, hampering his impression of your service. A happy customer is likely to recommend your brand to more people, while an unhappy one may give a bad review on Google. Other than customer satisfaction surveys and feedback, you can measure how your customers feel about your services with the customer satisfaction score.
17. Self-service support usage rate: Many companies now offer self-service support for the convenience of their customers. The self-service support usage metric measures the extent to which the customers take advantage of the self-service options to solve their support requests.  
18. Issues Backlog: Issues backlog is an undesirable situation for any company, but tracking this metric is important to understand and rectify the reason for unresolved tickets and unhappy customers. This percentage metric must be maintained as low as possible.

Steps to monitor Service Level Agreements Metrics performance

You can set up service desk SLA metrics and monitor its performance through the following steps:

1. Set a baseline by exploring your current SLAs and analyze how they align with the business goals.
2. Communicate directly with the customers to get constructive feedback
3. Draft your new SLAs with the information collated
4. Get support from top management and IT leaders to implement SLA best practices.  

How often should you revise your Service level agreement metrics?

As per the general guideline, Service level agreement metrics must be reviewed at least once a year or more often if there are any major changes that impact customer satisfaction or service delivery.

Conclusion

With the help of the right tools and software, you can measure every step of the customer journey across various channels. You can isolate the different Service level agreement metrics mentioned above to grasp key customer service data points accurately. The data obtained can be used to identify the areas that need improvement and deliver exceptional customer service.