In the current global business scene, it is important to be highly competitive. Companies' ability to beat and rise up from competition is considered important because revenues depend on it. Of course, it is apparent that competitive firms are more able to generate good income and profits because consumers and customers are reliant and trusting on them.

Competitiveness and good relationship with customers can be ensured by setting and putting in place good customer service practices. Good customer service levels would help your business achieve the competitiveness it needs. That is because putting into consideration the major perceptions of customers would make your company strive harder to develop good products and improve already existing products and services. To do so, you must adhere to good and working customer service metrics.

If your business has a customer service operations, you must ensure a recommended customer service metrics is in place. Usually, working customer service metrics include the following as main factors.

-- Volume of customer inquiries handled per hour. This is a measure of productivity. Of course, the higher the number of customers attended to in an hour, the better. But there is one common and logical setback. If you would force your customer service representatives to take numerous and continuous calls, for sure, the quality of call service would suffer.

-- Volume of customer complaints. This is not actually a direct customer service metrics but more of a performance indicator of the business and production operations. The more complaints your company receive, the more it is evident that your company has failed to be efficient in rendering and producing quality goods and services.

-- Volume of resolved customer complaints. If you would run a daily tally about the volume of resolved complaints from customers, you would be able to distinguish the effectiveness of the customer service unit. In return, customer satisfaction would be boosted. Customer service metrics should always include this measure.

-- Return customers volume. If customers keep on returning or buying your products, that means they are satisfied with the quality of services and products. In the customer service level, if clients keep on coming back despite their complaints, that means they realize that your business is still satisfactory.

Such customer service metrics can be considered more inclined on the quantitative side. Of course, by looking and tallying volumes of satisfied and dissatisfied customers, there are numbers involved. Quantitative metrics like the one described above are easier to handle and interpret.

However, you can also adopt and integrate within your quantitative metrics a good and working qualitative customer service metrics. A qualitative customer service metrics would take note and reflect stated opinions and overall perceptions held by customers. Most of the time, it is much more interesting to look at qualitative customer service metrics because they point more to quality issues. Interpretation would be easier and more convenient. If you would be able to look at qualitative measures and at the same time at quantitative customer service metrics, the better. Customer service metrics are a great way to evaluate the performance of helpdesk or call-center unit of any company.