Support Efficiency Defined
Support Efficiency is the ability of a company to effectively guide customers towards adopting and successfully applying products to achieve their intended outcomes, using the most cost-effective methods.
This entails strategically balancing various support channels—including self-help, assisted support, and automation—to maximize engagement and resolution success at minimal costs.
While scalability and cost-efficiency are crucial, the paramount goal is to ensure customers receive the necessary support to realize the full value of their investments.
Optimal Support Efficiency
Optimizing Support Efficiency requires a balance between delivery costs and delivery effectiveness. The costliest support methods – assisted engagement are the most effective. The lowest cost delivery methods – automation and self-help – cost less per engagement but are not the most effective at resolving customer issues.
Support delivery efficiency requires the optimized use of multiple support engagement methods.
Support Efficiency Metrics
Support efficiency means that a customer has received an effective answer to their question using the lowest cost engagement method.
An effective answer suggests that a customer has received necessary information to help them adopt or apply a product by resolving an issue or learning how to use a feature.
Support inefficiency suggest that a satisfactory answer could have been provided to a customer using a lower cost delivery channel.
The following metrics can help you identify opportunities to maximize support efficiency
% of Support Engagement
Channel where the consumption of support occurs.
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This measures the proportional allocation of support’s full reach across all engagement channels to determine where customers find value and get answers. A customer may engage with multiple delivery channels in the pursuit of an answer thus the total reach of support will reflect multiple engagements per customer, per issue. Engagements may represent a view or impression of shared knowledge, a meaningful engagement where customers derive value, or receipt of a complete answer. |
Costs per Engagement
The cost to offer a channel by the level of channel use. |
Support incurs the costs to engage with customers through assisted, automated and self-help interactions. The cost per engagement is calculated based on the total cost to deliver support by a specific channel divided by the total number of engagements for that channel. Costs should include all support costs including staff, management, content creation and system costs allocated to each delivery channel. |
Resolution Rate
Rate that customers accept answers by channel. |
Resolution rate measures the number of times customers indicate that they have fully resolved their question. This is relatively straightforward to measure through assisted channels yet more elusive with automated and self-help engagement channels. Every delivery channel must report the rate of answers delivered and fully resolved. |
Costs per Resolution
The cost to fully resolve issues per channel. |
Cost per resolution provides the cost to deliver a complete answer though a specific delivery channel by diving the cost to provide access to that engagement channel by the number of fully resolved issues delivered by that channel. |
Support Efficiency By The Numbers
If you would like to see performance benchmarks for different delivery channels and use cases, download the full report (see below).
