How do you measure the success of your Customer Service Staff?

Many Customer Service staff are measured by quantitative indicators, things such as the number of calls handled, the wait time, the number of customers served, and the average time per service transaction, the number of hang ups etc.

While this is useful data I would like to suggest a different philosophical approach, one of being fully customer focused and pro-active in the area of customer satisfaction.

I suggest you measure staff on their abilities to deliver complete satisfaction to customers.

Rather than being reactive and process driven in determining customer needs, teach your people to be more acute listeners and observers. While you are doing this, give them authority to fix problems when it seems reasonable to do so.

Hmmmm, I hear you thinking…how will I measure that? What about using Common Sense? Surely that would be too simple!