Benchmarks to measure messaging success

The most common question contact centers ask after deciding to embrace asynchronous messaging is: how should I measure the success of messaging?  This includes having the ability to measure agent productivity, customer satisfaction, and ROI.
While some KPIs for asynchronous messaging resemble traditional ones for session-based interactions that handle voice calls, live chat, or offline ticketing, messaging cannot be measured the same way. That’s because messaging is asynchronous, with a thread and history that stays in place so agents and consumers can jump back in the conversation at any time. Meaning, messaging does not always have a clear start or end to a conversation. To highlight the effectiveness of asynchronous messaging, a supplemental set of messaging-specific KPIs needs to be established.
LivePerson has developed a set of proprietary data KPIs that enable brands to track and monitor the performance and success of their messaging programs.

4 Baseline KPIs & metrics for messaging

1. Measuring Consumer Experience (MCS) score

LivePerson’s proprietary consumer sentiment analysis software that measures the consumer experience in real-time is called Meaningful Conversation Score (MCS). The MCS technology doesn’t rely on customers answering surveys, but rather automatically analyzes the tone, content, and sentiment of consumers’ actual conversations with the brand in real-time. The MCS range is between -100 to 100 where negative words and connotations will result in a negative number, and positive words will result in a positive number.

MCS can also be applied to skill, agent, agent group, and line of business to get a full picture of any aspect of their operational performance. This allows the following applications:

• Real-time alerts
• Training opportunities
• Tracking broader brand performance

MCS is superior to traditional customer satisfaction methods because it uses text analytics and NLP, which do not require any action from consumers. Once the action is required by a consumer, bias often clouds the data: Consumers who fill in CSAT tend to be more satisfied than the ones who don't. Additionally, only 15%-30% of brand's consumers fill in CSAT rendering it an unreliable measurement of satisfaction of the entire consumer population.

2. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

Similar to MCS, CSAT provides high-level diagnostics of customer experience. Using LivePerson’s Post-Conversation Survey bot, brands can set up a Q&A experience triggered after a conversation between a consumer and an agent concludes. Through this conversational experience, between the Survey Bot and the consumer, qualitative KPIs should be captured.

3. Closed conversations per login hour (CCPLH)

4. Resolution rate

The resolution rate is a program efficiency metric that gives brands an indication if they have created the right messaging program to meet their consumers' needs (are you engaging consumers at the right time? Are agents resolving conversations on time?). LivePerson has set the standard of three days as the cut-off metric for conversation resolution, meaning if a consumer doesn’t return with the same issue after three days, the conversation is considered to be resolved.

Through the resolution tab, brands can determine how many login hours their program is spending on unresolved conversations. Using the supplemental analyses - automation, transfer, agent effectiveness, and resolution, brands can pinpoint reasons for returning consumers.

Reporting on messaging KPIs

Together with proprietary customer satisfaction management tools to measure the consumer experience, demand, and overall contact center performance, LivePerson reports are tailored for asynchronous messaging. See the Data & Reporting section for more information on where to see these metrics.